


Ways to Describe Children

by BloodandFat



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Decadence, Decapitation, M/M, Max is a victim of the world, Militia, Murder, Pre-meditated murder, Racial slurs, Rape, Super AU, The max and david tag is platonic, Underage - Freeform, Weaponry, and super trivial, incredible violence, like its barely relevant, mafia, should be read by no one ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-02-07 01:34:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12830523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodandFat/pseuds/BloodandFat
Summary: What's Max's life outside David's romanticised and cutesy camp? The real world, I suppose.This fanfiction doesn't deal with Camp Camp. I took some characters and out blossomed a fuck ton of fantastical violence and romanticised pain.And now for the worst summary you've ever read in your entire life:Mafia member, Hank, battles the demons of his murdered family when he's ordered to kill the pharmaceutical head, Frank Demir. He’s left with the orphaned son, Max, a kid who triggers familial guilt, and eventually causes Hank to betray his gang and go on the run to save Max’s life. The two cross country, until the master plan fails, but something daringly unexpected pops up. Hank thinks he might be able to finally redeem himself, for his mistake ten years ago, with the reincarnated ten-year-old beside him, if he doesn't fuck or kill the kid in the process.





	1. Derivative Bullshit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The exposition's fucking rushed, but give it three paragraphs and you're headfirst into the violence. Your welcome, I guess?

“...and so I said it seems like you need a _hype_ man. Get it?” He pauses, “Max?”

My sitter’s warm eyes bring me back to the reality of the room we were confined to. I blink twice. “Yeah. That was funny, David.”

Are you okay?” The gentle pity in his eyes hurts. "I know you hate these nights, but your parents should be done soon, and until then, I’ve got some su- _perb_ games we can play.” Excitedly, the man begins to unpack and I let my mind wander again while he chatters to fill the void like always. It had all become habit by now, year ten of me practically living in the pharmaceutical's old conference rooms, waiting. The room's so familiar to me it makes me nauseous.

Tracing the millions of scratches on the wood, I notice disjointedly that the pharmaceutical’s name, _Brusey Co_ , which was engraved into the wood, has the slur _Big Pharma_ is scribbled next it, a jab at the shady gang-dealings that some of the company’s representatives engaged in to keep the pharmaceutical unopposed and madly lucrative. It was a badly kept secret that everyone and their mother knew, but this kind of corruption was more or less a fact of life that the people of the city of Tammany understood. It was for that very reason I suppose my parents kept me close but far-- close enough so that I wouldn’t get kidnapped by opposition, but far enough so that I felt like a stranger in their presence. I hated my parents sometimes, and I hated nights like this.

____

“ _Max_. Max? It’s okay. Frank-- I mean, your father will be finished his meeting soon.”

____

I blink at the board and pretend I was considering my move on the game board, “I know, David. Your turn.”

____

He won't let up though. “I know your dad lets you go to the meetings when your mom’s not around.” He winks at me suggestively, “Maybe next time you can convince your Dad to join!”

____

When I look up to meet David’s warm eyes, I hate him this time, “I don’t want to go. I never want to go.”

____

David looks so distraught, I feel bad for a moment, but the man is predictably nonconfrontational and positive, and so he smiles widely again after only a beat of silence. "That's okay Max. Make your move whenever you're ready."

____

I would never admit it, but of my life of sitters since five, David was the only sitter I’d tolerated because I thought he was the only one could see past my facade of cynicism. I liked him far more than I'd ever show, maybe because I thought he was the only one who actually cared.

____

David smiles, “How does some cupcakes sound, kiddo? I baked some earlier on today and popped them in the fridge.”

____

He forgets I’m diabetic. I shake my head politely, “No thanks, David. Maybe next time.” And I knew he’d forget again. I didn’t take it personally. David was a busy man just past college, babysitting countless lonely kids like me to survive. I didn’t expect him to remember anything except that the name “Brusey Co.” would look amazing on a resume.

____

David looks like he’s just about to say something when a sudden sharp mechanical wail makes us jump. I’d never heard the emergency alarms go off before. Equally puzzled, David tries to channel into his walkie-talkie, but to no response. "That's weird.” he murmurs, “We’ll just have to sit back, I guess.” He tries to say it calmly, but it comes off nervous.

The man anxiously paces for a while, then sits down, then finally lets curiosity get the best of him as he opens the hallway door to peer outside."I'll check to see if someone-- oh!"

____

David immediately attempts to slam the door shut, but whoever's on the other side barrels through, sending him sprawling. An enormous man, who had to be well over six feet, thickly insulated with muscle and fat lumbers into the room. He scopes out the room quickly, and upon realizing it was just the two of us, visibly relaxes. He locks the door deliberately after himself. 

____

The man inspects David, probably to assess his threat level, and dismisses him almost instantly, locking eyes with me instead, "I'm here for you."

____

I don't move. 

____

"For what reason?" David manages to ask, rather bravely.

____

"To kill him," he says straightforwardly, "The parents are being taken care of as we speak. All that's left is him."

____

I choke, backing up immediately, knocking over chairs, and the man turns on me, lumbering over. I grab a chair and throw it in his direction, but he catches it and sets it aside mid-walk. He's got far, _far_ longer limbs and he crosses the room in just a few strides and grabs me roughly by the wrists. I back up as far as I can still and the man is wringing my wrists hard enough to break them. I'm swearing profusely, both in pain and in sheer panic, and the man smacks me to shut me up, hard enough so I see white.

____

The man's was probably about to strike me unconscious next when David throws himself on the man. 

____

"Stop! He's just a kid! What kind of sick fuck are you!"

____

The man sneers, jerking David off and just about sending him flying, "He's the product of a drug cartel mastermind, buddy. The little shit knows more than he lets on."

____

"I--," I can't believe I'm actually speaking, but I'm afraid all of a sudden of _dying_ , "I have no idea about--You have the wrong person, I don't--"

____

The man scowls dangerously and I regret speaking, "Are you saying your parents don't own this piece of shit, Brusey Co?"

____

"No, no--they do," I swallow, "They do. But by name really. They don't really do much of anything effective. It's really all the shady side-businesses that do anything important for the company. They're just figureheads. All they try to do is keep the corruption on the low."

____

The man's smiling dangerously, "You seem to know a lot for someone who doesn't know _absolutely anything_." He mimics me in a high pitched whine.

____

"I--I don't. I'm just kind of forced to come to their every meeting. I just pick up fragments here and there."

____

"Ahhh," the man nods, pleased, as if that all he wanted to hear, "Every meeting? Is that so, kiddo? Very well," The man puts a hand into his pocket, and I relax until the man brings it out again, grasping thickly incised hunting knife, "Guess I can't just slit your throat then and call it a day can I? Now I gots to get some information outta you first."

____

I stumble back again and the intruder yanks me towards the blade of his knife, hissing, "Spit out what you know."

____

David is a sickly grey-white, frozen in horror, his eyes bloodshot and darting hysterically from me to the intruder, and back. He finally blurts, desperately, "Take me instead!"

____

The man pauses for a moment, then laughs, "Oh boy, little man. Don't flatter yourself. I was gonna get you next anyways. Can’t have any witnesses."

____

David's barely able to process his words before the man’s grabbed him by his head and has slammed him face-first against the wooden desk, then against the porcelain sink, then the mirror above it, with each successive crunch getting louder, before tossing him aside. 

____

My scream is curtailed when the man drops the now unconscious and bloodied sitter and grabs me by my throat. He slams me up against the wall.

____

I'd always considered myself a resourceful kid with a decent sense of self-defense, but I'm no match against this gargantuan, a man almost three times my height and just fucking packed with far too much fat and muscle. The man releases my throat and towers over me. I can feel his hot breath fan my face and I wrinkle my nose. "So kid. Tell me then about all the shady dealings the Kæ gang is doing."

____

"The--the who?"

____

The man scowls, "Look, I don't need to kill you. That's just an option I choose to take. I really only need information in the end. I can make this easy for you, or I can fucking destroy you."

____

"I--" I'm so confused and frustrated that I don't understand. "I don't know what a Kæ is. I've never heard of it before."

____

The man, without warning, grabs my throat again, but with both his hands this time. I've bitten my tongue in surprise and I can taste the blood. The sandpaper-rough pads of this fingers dig harshly into the crevices of my neck. He slides me up the wall, fingers still deep in my neck, and begins to squeeze. The man keeps his thick fingers fastened around my windpipe for a full minute before letting go. I refuse to utter a single sound when he does, recovering lost breath through my nose, calmly and collectedly. 

____

I'm dimly-aware resistance won't do anything, but I'm furious behind my terror. _How fucking dare this man_ , I can't help but think. I was about ninety percent sure the man was yet another intimidator from the Shö gang, Brusey Co's rival. It's the same terror tactics that I've seen time and time again, and while their intimidators have never been this violent or handsy, it's something I could definitely see the Shö resort to. I reassure myself that the Shö's men are forbidden from injuring badly. 

____

But not even ten seconds has passed and the man's strangling me again. It's not completely unexpected, but the man holds it for almost two minutes this time, and he holds my throat in this unnecessarily forceful grip, like his intent is to bruise, and this time it hurts unbearably. I felt as if he was going to snap my neck.

____

This time when he lets go, I'm desperate to breathe, gasping before I can help himself, and the man uses that moment of weakness to grab my neck, before I can even take in a proper breath, to squeeze again. I audibly gag.

____

My hands are in fists, desperately pounding and palming the wall behind me. I've forgotten about dignity-- I'm begging before the first minute, bucking frantically under this fucking beast-of-a-man. The man's so much larger than me, a disjointed part of my mind complains uselessly, and I think it's all so unfair. My vision's beginning to go blurry and my hearing is diminishing and for a moment, I think I'm actually going to die.

____

But finally, the man does let go, and the sound and light come flooding back as I gasp for breath uncontrollably. I sound like I'm sobbing. I hate how helpless I sound, and I hate that the larger man above me is reveling in it.

____

The man finally removes his hands and lets me recover, to my abject humiliation. "You're headfirst for a kid." He says simply, and I'm glad that's all he says. He grabs both of my wrists with one hand and zipties it three times over, then does the same thing with my ankles. He props me up against the wall behind me.

____

He kneels down to my height and puts a firm hand on the back of my neck. I'm thinking the man wants to gag me next, or worse, begin choking me again, but his hand just rests there as he just...rubs it? The man's thumb gently drives into the knobs of my spine that run up and disappear under my sweaty, curly hair. It feels like a piss-poor attempt at comfort, but it also feels far too handsy to be good-natured. I want to stop him, but I also didn't want to lose teeth when the man wasn't even being violent. I watch his movements warily. 

____

He's much too close. I want to spit in his face, but my mouth's as dry as sandpaper. My throat is absolutely raw. I don't even think I can dry swallow.

____

The man's slipped his other hand into my hair and the one on my neck has shifted downwards. When I feel the hand begin to trail down my back, I shift uncomfortably, and the man stops and locks eyes with me. For a minute, I'm terrified the man is going to kiss me. But then he smiles and finally stands up.

____

"Nice to see you're a little more compliant now. Guess strangling the fuck out of you did work," he smirks, "Would you like to share any more information now?"

____

" _Fuck you_ ," I spit-- I'm done with his mind-games. "I. Don't. Know. Shit." I annunciate harshly and I expect the man to smack me for it but he shrugs at my first sentence and drawls:

____

"Perhaps."

____

He reaches into his pocket and unsheathes his hunting knife again. I'm truly scared now. The man wouldn't hurt me, I'm telling myself, but doubt's kneading at me now. That strangulation attempt could've very easily killed me or at least put me under had my parents not feverishly drilled every kind of survival hack into my head. But this man shouldn't have known that.

____

Somewhere in my mind, I fear the man’s from a place far worse than simply a neighboring competitor. 

____

The assailant's wiping his knife, a knife clearly not designed for intimidation but actual butchering, and I find myself begging frantically to God that the man doesn't stab me. 

____

My prayers are answered.

____

When the knife sinks into David's unconscious torso, I scream loud enough to hurt my own ears. The assailant locks eyes with me as he pulls out the blade out of the profusely bleeding wound and stabs David deep in his bowels, again, and again, and again, and I scream louder every time, still. 

____

David's clean-pressed work shirt bloodies before the red liquid streams down his pants and shoes and then the floor. David's body jerks with every stab and his limbs twitch uncontrollably, but he doesn't wake. Eventually, he stops twitching and I'm terrified he's...

____

The skin's completely gone after the first dozen stabs and now the intruder's in his intestines.

____

_Oh God, he's gutting him, oh God, he's gutting him_. 

____

I'm bucking uncontrollably against my bonds, smacking my head violently against the wall behind him. I'm trying to get away, or maybe I'm trying to meld into the wall, just something. I think I'm going to break my wrists and I think I'm going to get a concussion. I feel possessed, shrieking _David, David_ in a voice that sounds absolutely nothing like my own.

____

And finally, the man's done. He's done and there are intestines hanging out of the body cavity and the floor is a pool of blood. I make a horrible keening sound with whatever's left of my voice and I don't recognize it. 

____

_He's dead, he's dead, he's dead._

____

"Say something on his behalf. I'm not done yet with him, yet. Him offering himself for you was really the sweetest thing I ever saw." he says with a laugh, "Come on, beg me. If it wasn't for him, I probably would've gutted you instead."

____

It's all such a ploy because David must be dead already, but I try to say something anyways. Or at least I try. But I've screamed so much and my throat is fucking searing, and I'm not even sure if I can breathe from the strain of not crying, let alone speak. My voice breaks and I try to offer my tied arms instead as amnesty.

____

The man actually laughs, almost affectionately. "Precious," he says more to himself than to me, and raises the knife to David's throat nonetheless. 

____

_He's dead, he's dead, he's dead_ , is running through my head again rapidly, but this time it's a plea because the intruder proceeds to decapitate him. 

____

There's a disgusting sound that fills the room, second to the blood gushing out of the throat and capillaries of the severed head and neck, and I dimly realize the disgusting guttural sound is coming from my throat. 

____

The man sprays the tables and chairs with the gushing blood as if it was a fucking garden hose, and then tosses aside the ruined corpse of what used to be David as if he were nothing more than a rag doll. He takes a step towards me, swinging his knife deliberately to throw drops of blood at my face.

____

"Now, I'm going to gut you, and while you choke to death on your own bile, I'll fuck you. How does that sound, you little cunt?"

____

I make a desperate sound that's a gag and a sob at the same time. I try to scream at him but nothing comes out. I can't stop seeing red and I think my heart is going to stop.

____

And then the lock shifts and we both freeze. A man holding a master key opens the door. He's bearded and tattooed, and while he isn't as large as the mammoth murderer in front of me, his presence is enough to freeze him.

____

The newcomer looks distastefully at the ruined body and beaten kid before him. "Jay. I thought you had _standards_."

____

Jay mock-tosses his knife. "Relax. I don't hurt kids. I would've never touched him."

____

I'm shaking violently, now. I take in a breath to speak, to try and say something, but it catches in my throat and I choke instead.

____

The new man gives Jay a large ring of keys and a file with one hand, and snatches the bloodied knife and pockets it with the other, blood-smeared and all.

____

"Your ride's outside. Remember: take the fucking interstate okay?"

____

"Whatever. At least I found the fucking kid." Jay pockets the stuff and looks around the room, assessing all the damage as if really seeing it all for the first time. 

____

"I'll clean up.” The man states as Jay nods and finally leaves.

____

The man walks over closer over to inspect what was left of David, then turns to face me. He kneels down, assessing my state as I look away, before bending over to pick me up. "You're coming with me." 

____

I flinch badly when he touches me, and the man squeezes my arm hard enough to bruise, hissing in a low voice, "Look. Nobody is going to help you. We've gotten rid of everybody in this entire building and halted any kind of emergency response from responding to us in a five mile radius. If you give me any trouble at all, I will break your neck, do you understand me?"

____

The strain not to cry was so great, I lost my voice.

____

The man picks me up and flings me over his shoulder, effortlessly, like a sack, before darting out the room and sprinting down the lengthy hallway and stopping beside a crawl space hidden behind a frame and a storage cabinet. A hear a key turn something and when he turns me around, there’s a hatch popped open. The first thing I notice is the heat and how narrow it is, and how it descends steeply. I realize it’s the secret exit my parents had told me all about: the one that was supposed to lead them to safety had anything happened. The irony burns deep in my guts.

____

I think I’m about to suffocate when the man reaches a removable panel and I finally feel the night air hit me. Once we’re on gravel, the man begins to pick up speed, his pace comparable to most people's jogging, and my face soon aches from hitting his back with every stride. We couldn't have been traveling for more than five minutes when I hear the faint noise of sirens, and the man jerks and stops. He's moving towards the light, I think. I hear a car door close and--

____

_Oh dear God, it can't be--_

____

"Deputy. What are you doing here this fine night?" My kidnapper asks nonchalantly. 

____

_Yes! Yes! Yes, yes, yes!_

____

"Well, sir, we're sealing off the downtown area to prevent anyone from leaving. My branch's investigating what seems to be a fatal assault. We've just been dispatched about five minutes ago so the news is rather new. The first-wave responders are saying it's another Shö attack against the Brusey Company."

____

"The Shö? Is what everyone's saying?"

____

I had no fucking idea what was happening. _The officer can see the blood smeared on the man's shirt, right? They can literally see a ziptied kid tossed over his shoulder, right?_

____

There's a silence, and then the deputy says in awe, "Is that the _Demir's_ kid?"

____

"What?" the man ridicules, his laughter shaking me, "What kid? Have you seen a kid anywhere?"

____

The official's response is a crude loud laugh, "Holy fucking shit. That's incredible. No, sir. We haven't seen a kid anywhere."

____

There's a crinkling noise, and with a roll of nausea, I realize it's bills and that the deputy's being _bribed_. 

____

"Alrighty, Hank! Boss Charles has already compensated my branch heavily, but if you insist," The deputy is laughing again, and all I can think is that the whole police force knows this kidnapper by his _name_. The deputy chuckles lowly and says, "Have fun."

____

I can't help myself. Once the man's got us both out of earshot of the police, I've begun crying, smearing tears all over the back of the man's leather jacket, more hyperventilating grossly than actually sobbing. I know I'm not discrete and I half expect the man to smack me quiet, but after a minute, the man pulls me down lower so that, instead of being painfully swung over his shoulder, my face is buried in his chest. Whether out of pity or convenience, I'll never know. 

____

The man's begun running now, and eventually, I realize that others have joined him. We're moving through some kind of forest at first, and then we're riding on a trailer on a dirt path, and then we're in an open car on a highway. I quickly lose my concept of time. I'm not sure when the man switches from car to cart to foot--I've been pressed against the man's chest tightly regardless of it all. I'm being held so that I'm facing the sky and it feels like I'm being offered to an altar. My zip ties make me think I will never feel my hands again. 

____

When I wake up again it's dawn and I realize it's all been a single night.

____

We're at a camp of some sort, a kind of rest stop, with tents set up on the grounds and several military vans parked around the place. There's a clear shallow stream on the left where the men from last night are filling their canteens. There are more of them now, scattered around, than from what I'd heard last night, and I can see them all clearly. They're similarly dressed, if not exactly, in a mostly sandy attire. None of them have human cargo, I note sarcastically.

____

My abductor moves over to the lake too, but I notice he situates himself far from the other men. I'm glad. He sets me down on the grass beside him and puts a blade, the one from last night, between my wrists to lacerate the ties. I shudder when they break. He leaves the ones on my ankles intact, presumably, so I wouldn't run, and it's a useless precaution. 

____

I put a hand to my cheek, feeling the imprint of the man's jacket. My throat hurts from sobbing. The man bends over the water to wash his face and hands, and I watch the water run red.

____

I have to swallow back the ugly noise that rises up my throat.

There's undeniable violence in the man's eyes, but when he turns to look at me midrise, as if surprised I wasn't contentedly washing myself beside him, there's a surprising gentility in them. I wonder if its pity.

____

"Holy shit, is that the Demir heir? Alive?" a crass voice booms from behind me, "Damn, I thought--wow, Hank, my fucking man!" 

____

"Todd." My abductor acknowledges as he shakes hands with him. “It was Jay who found him.” When Todd looks at me, there's no gentility, but a covetousness that terrifies me. He takes my face before I can move back, "Wow. Boss Charles'll be hella pleased."

____

The man grabs my wrists and I know what his expression means. I jerk back and mumble, “Don’t.”

____

A bell goes off and the other members begin to methodically collect themselves and head over to a row of open-roofed military trucks parked on the dirt road they'd presumably come from. My abductor pulls me back and Todd sneers, shoving me. “As if Charles needs this fucker for longer than a week anyways.”

____

_My parents are dead,_ I'm beginning to understand, all at once, _they're dead, they're dead, they're dead._

____

The man takes my wrists and zip ties it once again, tighter now than before. It hurts on raw skin. He picks me up again, like luggage, and begins heading towards the vehicles. My hands shake violently from either fear, exhaustion, or both, so much so that the man feels it this time. His voice is so low that when he speaks, I feel it in my soul: 

"You’ll be fine."

____

  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my entire life


	2. Executive Dysfunction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh fuck me
> 
> Also the POV from here changes to Hank

_You're responsible for him_

“Hey Hank! Great job last night!"

I startle at the voice, even though I should've seen him coming. I'd been distracted all morning. He's a painfully obvious newbie, a scrawny, 20-something-year-old kid, who's grinning at me and looking a little star-struck.

"Jay found the kid in the building first," I say, and it feels like the millionth time I've had to deflect flattery with the disclaimer, "I just took him the rest of the way." 

"You still coordinated the entire heist and got all the Montivellos back without any losses," he says, hitting me on the back, as if we were freinds at all, "Good job!"

I force another smile and plug in a higher weight, hoping he'd would take a hint, "Nobody would've died, anyways. Thanks."

"Where's the prize kid now?" Oh my god, and the fucker's taking up the bench press next to me. 

"I don't know." I huff, contracting my arms with the new weight. I didn't want to think about the shit kid. I didn't want to think about the shit mission. I never wanted anything to do the fucking Demirs, and I wouldn't have to if Boss Charles hadn't been so fixated on them. They were worthless CEOs. They didn't have any real power or connections with the Kæ. The only thing Charles's unnecessarily violent and public crusade did was have the FBI fucking scour the country looking for us, even more so then they already were.

"So the kid's not for you?" The cunt's still asking, confused.

The weights clang loudly as I drop them to my side. The kid flinches at the sound and I sit up straight, "What the fuck would I do with a kid?"

"Right. I don't know. So is Charles, em-- I mean--the boss, just gonna kill him off like the parents?"

I'd very painstakingly brought the Demir's kid as a hostage, to use as a political weapon against the public of course, but the fact that Charles might want to kill the kid off without telling me hadn't really occurred to me. 

"I gotta go," is my response and I've grabbed my towel and am already halfway towards the exit.

"It was nice meeting you." He says faintly as the doors close and I hope never see him again.

I rush through the hallways, the recycled stale air drying the sweat across my face like a mask. I couldn't stand being down in these minimal-waste bunkers for longer than a few days. I just felt it all so unnecessary, since the bunker itself was already situated hundreds of feet underground, under a huge parking garage that Boss Charles owned, and in an isolated desert in the back of Texas. But Boss Charles was meticulous if anything, and he even made sure he owned most of the authorities in Arlington too.

It'd been Charles’s dream since he formed the Montivellos to take out the Demirs. He'd spent years planning this crusade, memorizing the cooperation's daily habits, bribing the security, learning their innermost secrets. He's had every force in Tammany under his control for that single night, all the way from the chief of police to the emergency responders.

It was a worryingly logical conclusion to make, that in Charles's glory-high and haste, he might consider the mission incomplete unless the final Demir was dead too. 

"Hank, my man!" yells a southern-accented voice from the deck below, "You're finally out of your lab. Feels good to finally have heist over with, huh!"

"Foster," I acknowledge with a hand wave back, "Have you seen Charles?"

"I saw him about an hour ago heading for the prison unit."

_Oh fuck me._

"Are you coming to the cabinet meeting?" he asks.

 _Hell no._ "I don't think so." I say tactfully before boarding the elevator. _I'd rather stab myself_.

The elevators down here seldom traveled up or down, but horizontally from unit to unit. There were seven units in total, each guarded and walled protectively in a formation that encircled Charles's central office.The section I was heading to was my absolute least favorite--the prison unit. It was a labyrinth of cells set up in a purposefully convoluted design meant to isolate a prisoner and drive him deep into the chamber. Every surface except the floors was rodded, designed to give the prisoner the impression that they were in a cell inside a cell inside a cell. 

There are times where, when you open the main door, the first thing you can smell is rotting flesh. And that's a smell that stays with you long after you've left.

It's my least favorite unit, not at all because I'm queasy about gore, but because I felt a cognitive dissonance in me when I'd see Charles's highest ranking men, men of elite training, regalia and sophistication, quickly disintegrate into barbarians in there. They did things like drill empty eye sockets, cut and peel faces off, rape children, and so forth. Jay, a product of that very training, reminds me of why I rejected a cabinet position in the first place.

I use my company card to unlock the main door. "Larry!" I call, when I see my longest standing friend already inside, locking a subdivision door behind him.

He smiles broadly when he sees me, pocketing the master-key set and wiping his hands on his shirt, "Hank, my fucking man. You almost scared me. I forgot about your company key. Great job on the--" 

"Yeah, yeah," I say waving my hand dismissively before grabbing his hand in a firm handshake, "What's good? Have you seen Charles?"

"He came down an hour ago. He was in the mood to slit the kid's throat--," he jerks his thumb behind him, "--so he made the rational choice of not actually going in. I think he's sending Tweed in a little bit with that cute little switch knife of his to deal with that kid's attitude."

"Why?"

"Well, the fucker's tried to escape two times and he won't eat."

I raise an eyebrow, "He's literally been here a day."

"Exactly."

"He's in there right now?"

"Yeah. Wanna see him?" he asks. He takes the key ring and opens the division door once more. We walk down the narrow corridor, passing empty cell after empty cell, until we reach the last one against the back wall and the only thing in the rusty cubical is a small blue lump with his face buried in the bed.

"Oh."

Larry grabs the door's handle and bangs it against the lock to stir him. When the kid turns to face the rattling, his eyes clench shut immediately upon seeing me and I assume I'm bringing back memories.

"Geez, Hank, whatya do to him?" Larry laughs, unlocking the door, "Go check up on him. He's your burden now according to Charles. Maybe you can talk some sense into him so Tweed doesn't have to fucking beat it into him." Larry pulls the door close after himself and walks back out the hall, leaving me alone with the kid.

I'm not sure what to say to him. Violent coercion didn't seem applicable--he wasn't a gang head, a mass murderer, or a sex trafficker. He's one of the smallest kids I've ever seen and his eyes are trained on me warily, waiting for me to make a move. 

"So you're on a hunger strike, huh?" I say. I meant it to be threatening, but it comes out fucking awkward.

He doesn't say anything.

I stride towards him. His arm comes up immediately to shield his face. There are deep, red, painful looking rings around his tiny wrists where his zipties had been. 

I push the arm down. He says something that's probably supposed to be, _"get the fuck away from me,"_ but his voice is raw and hoarse and it comes out more like, "gfuck-away-fum-me."

"I'm not going to fucking hurt you," I say irritatedly, "That's not my job. I promise you that."

He doesn't seem to believe me and really, he shouldn't, but he does stop actively resisting me, allowing me to inspect the state of him. When I go to touch him though, I see that every visible muscle in his body is contracted in tension. 

The first thing I do is pull aside the collar of his sweatshirt to inspect the base of his neck better-- the marks there were bad enough for me to have noticed them even from the door. I can see the beginnings of what'll develop into some pretty bad bruises, with plenty running down his throat and couple of his forearm where he'd been grabbed or pinned roughly. But what warrants my attention is the gritty wounds on the sides of his forehead and the bone of his cheeks. He's bled over his temples and into his hair and it looks like he'd had his face dragged over gravel. I knew for a fact I didn't do it, and I was surprised I hadn't noticed it earlier.

I take a sanitation tissue from my backpack and take his face by his chin. "This might sting." I warn.

He doesn't wince or flinch, even when I'm digging into the shallow wound to get the tiny chunks of dirt out. His arms have found themselves pulled up around himself protectively, instinctively, while I work. He closes his eyes when I jab particularly harshly and his lashes fan out over colorful bruising. He has childishly long eyelashes. They're thick and uneven, like his hair. 

He trusts me, at least enough to let me touch him, and I get this cruel urge to reopen his wounds, to leave him bleeding over his bed for Boss Charles' arrival. It'd reign back his defiance nice enough.

But the urge passes and I look up to see him staring at me again, "I know you," he manages to say, stilling me. "You're supposed to be dead."

My hands tighten murderously around his wrists and he winces this time, "Oh yeah, little shit? Did Daddy Demir tell you how I killed my son too or do you only have the pleasure to know me by face?"

He doesn't respond. 

"My boss, Charles, you see, is pretty fucking pissed at you. I was sent here to tell you to pipe down before he loses it." When I let go of his wrists, I leave white hand-shaped prints on his skin. I leave, slamming the cell door behind me, and he doesn't say anything.

Larry's waiting for me on the other side. He smirks when he sees the bloody sanitation tissue in my hand. "Did you teach him a lesson?"

"I didn't hurt him," I say, and it's mostly true. I close the chamber door shut before saying, "He knew who I was."

"What?"

"The kid. He told me I was supposed to be dead."

Larry looks skeptical, "He had to have been a newborn when you left Brusey Co. And there was no reason for Frank Demir to be talking about you, or your “death".” He makes air quotations and I scowl.

"Well he did frequently enough for the shit to be able to recognize me."

"It doesn't matter?” shrugs Larry, "He's never going to see anyone outside of us again, and he's not gonna be around for too long, I promise you. He's not gonna spill to anyone worthwhile. Except the Hooters' girls you keep bringing around." He snorts.

"I don't think Charles is going to kill him," I say carefully.

"So what's he going to do, raise him?" Larry shoots back sarcastically. "After Charles is done using the kid, the Demir chapter is over and we can finally move to the Kæ."

"How's he going to use the kid, exactly? I brought him for political leverage, but that can go numerous ways."

"I was thinking Charles was going to make a ransom video with the kid to cash in. Least, that's what Foster's working on. Of course, that's not possible if the kid's not cooperative."

I roll my eyes, "He'll be fine. He's terrified is all."

"Are you going to the cabinet meeting?" He asks as I turn to leave and I'm irate.

"When did you start going to them?" Larry had rejected a cabinet position too, far before I did. We were the only ones to.

"We'd both been so heavily involved in the heist that's it's been practical to attend the meetings to understand the overall plan. You've been kind of doing your own thing as of late--"

"You know I fucking hate them--"

"Yeah, me too, but it doesn't matter what we think does it? Plus, what do you even have to do anymore? You used to lock yourself up in your lab for days at a time planning every minute detail for Brusey's takedown. It's over now."

"It's barely fucking close to over--"

"Exactly, it's not, and that's why Charles still needs you. You're in charge of the kid now, right? Isn't that what Charles said to you the night you returned?"

_Yeah. That's exactly what he said, _and my mood is ruined.__

____

"I'll think about it," I say dismissively, boarding the elevator again and Larry shakes his head as the doors close. I head for the lockers.

__

Larry got me to join the gang ten years ago, when the Montivellos was just a baby gang and when I was on the verge of death. We rose in ranks together as the tiny gang grew into an American empire. But somewhere in that decade tenure, Larry got sick of it all, and when he rejected his next promotion and instead took his rightful spot as the accountant and the operations manager fusion, it was less out of the same moral obligations that would drive me to reject the cabinet later on, and more the fact that Larry was a practical guy and found the cabinet unrewarding. He took a job that was madly under-appreciated and had far too many responsibilities, but that was exactly what Larry liked--control. And the Montivellos truly thrived under Larry's back-of-the-room organization, even if it lacked the glory of the cabinet.

__

Larry was the only person who understood why I was the way I was, why I could murder anyone in cold blood but get queasy around kids. He knew I had blood on my hands. And I suppose it was inevitable I'd meet a kid I'd have to hurt, and I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

__

But I try not to dwell on that.

__

When I open my cubical, the first thing that catches my eye is an embroidered, red and white envelope with the name, GAVIN X, stamped on the front. The Shö's logo is printed down its side.

__

"Hank! There you are." A voice booms suddenly behind me making me jump, and I turn around to see the man of the house, Boss Charles. He walks over with a grand smile, dressed to the nines as usual, and he shakes my hand firmly. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I thought you'd be recovering in your bunker for the day."

__

"So I thought," I say, courtesy smiling back. Charles smiled to no one but his cabinet and business allies, and so I considered it an honor. "I was looking for you, too, actually. I had to a few questions if you weren't too busy, one of which, regards this," I hold the letter upright so he can see the logo.

__

"Ah, yes," he says, eyes lingering on the letter before fixating on me warmly again, "I told Gavin about your work in LA and I even gave him one of the tracker syringes you'd collected. Apparently, he did his own research on you after and found out about your experience with the Demirs, plus the fact that you'd staged your own death after Jasper--"

__

"Yes," I interrupt as politely as possible and he takes the hint.

__

"Anyways. He was quite impressed and kind of had the audacity to express it too. Of course, I passed his invitation on to your domicile to be polite and all, but I didn't think it was any real temptation--"

__

"Invitation?" I feel my lip curl, "Is Gavin out of his mind? He thinks he can recruit people from your own gang?"

__

"A cabinet member too."

__

"I'm not--" I try my best to convey my disdain as respectfully as possible, "I'm not a cabinet member--"

__

"You'll always have a spot among the best, Hank," he says, "Whether it's under the name of the cabinet or not."

__

I switch the topic back, "The Shö nowadays has been nothing more than a country club of rich men who want a monopoly on the pharmaceutical market. I guess Gavin's trying to rebuild his image."

__

Charles smiles, opening one of the lockers and dropping something in it, "I knew you'd be insulted, but I respected his...attempt. The thing is Hank, Gavin thinks like us, but his only flaw is that he _isn't us_. I know you know well that if we wanted the Shö gone, we could easily have it done."

__

"Of course."

__

"But I rather like Gavin, and I'd like to think that behind all that wealth and narcissism is someone not entirely useless. Remember--," he says, leaning over to put a hand on my shoulder, "--a stupid man with money can always be of help to you."

__

"Of course," I repeat, shutting the locker and pocketing the papers. "So I'm free to just throw it away?"

__

"See Hank, as much as I admire potential, I'd like Gavin to understand...who he is. Can you, sometime this week, drive up to his place in WY and give your opinion...in person, if you will, about his invite."

__

I smile at the implication. "Harsh. If you say so."

__

"Your second concern? Or was that it?"

__

"My second question was--like--what is your plan exactly, with the Demir's heir?"

__

I'd half-expected him to get angry, like he always did whenever anybody mentioned the name _Demir_ in front of him, but he surprisingly smiles gently instead, "I was just heading to the cabinet meeting to discuss exactly this. I know you...rejected your seat ever so humbly, but I'd rather if you joined us for just this one. Give us an input, since after all, the hostage you've brought us is the very basis of our next step."

__

"Sure," I say, a little tiredly, just submitting to it all. I'd avoided his meetings for months under the pretense I was making major moves for the heist, which was true, but no matter how hard I tried to dissociate myself, I realized that now I was going to be stuck attending the meetings as long as the kid was involved. 

__

I follow Charles to the elevator where, with the swipe of his card, we're transported to the main center complex. In the central conference room, Larry and the Board of Directors, or the cabinet, as Charles so presidentially called it, are already seated and chatting eagerly, and Charles stays back to take a call. When I enter, I'm greeted by a loud chorus of exuberant swears and slurs and I grin before I can help it.

__

"The man of the fucking year," yells Todd, slapping my back as Stefan grabs me a chair, "I was beginning to think you were too busy drowning in bitches to give us a call."

__

"Who you fucking now? Is it Amy DeVos or Tawny?"

__

"Both," I say, and they all howl in response. I realize then, how much I missed the very colleagues I grown up in the Montivellos beside.

__

"You beat the shit out one of them, didn't you? The one you liked?"

__

"Just like his dad," one snorts, and I feel a sharp pang of pain before I suppress it back and laugh along loudly. The quips go on, but once Charles enters, the men quiet down immediately. Charles begins the meeting as usual, listing the basic stats-- the stats I'd provided him with. As he talks, I can't help but really take it in, how far Charles had gotten, getting the Montivellos to rise rapidly to infamy. Charles was truly a man who radiated with power. He was born to be successful, whether that was in the law or beyond it.

__

"...but most importantly, the chief of police have finally confirmed that they've finally eliminated all connections or trails," he continues, "And that the news telecasters are continuing to list exactly what Todd scripted them to."

__

I could point out many flaws in Charles, like the fact that he was a neurotic and fanatical beast, but for every flaw, I could list a virtue too. Charles was a wildly intelligent man, someone I owed my life to and admired, and however cruel he was, there was no doubt that it was truly his unmatched acumen and tact that kept his power in his hands and his empire high.

__

The men break into polite applause once he finishes and Tweed stands up next. He's an absolutely enormous Italian man with a bald head and a fucking creepy smile. There's a thick layer of red and black tribal tattoos that lines his arms and neck. He looks like the kind of guy who wrestles bears in his free time, and to say he's probably the largest in a group of men whose height and weight range starts at a 6 foot, 200 pound minimum, it's not an understatement. 

__

"This stunt has changed public perception of the Montivellos irreversibly, and our next step is crucial. We're just a single step away from having Montivello as a common household name, and all we need for that to happen, is the kid. And Foster's been working on that, actually."

__

Foster doesn't bother to stand up, he just leans forward across the table with his meaty arms moving animatedly, "Basically, you all have seen the kid, right? Cute, isn't he? Our first move? Use him to get the mayor of Tammany to pay us a pretty ransom. We'll film the kid for the telly so that there's literally this visual imagery seared into the public's mind, _oh my god this little kid's been napped by a gang who just ripped the guts out of the Brusey employees_. The Mayor'll cave to the public pressure guaran- _teed_ , and then, we can do it all over again, but this time, have the video be fucking terrifying. We can ask for absolutely anything then to promise we'll return the kid."

__

"Anything referring to information on the Kæ." says Charles clarifies approvingly, "We could even get them to clear some of our records."

__

"Do I still have to beat the fuck out of the kid to make him compliant enough to film?" Tweed intervenes a little irritatedly, "If the kid seems at all upset in the first one, I think you'll tip the public off that you have no intention of returning him."

__

"Hank's dealt with him already." Larry replies, "Apparently he's good now."

__

Charles gives me a firm nod of approval before continuing, "Jay's just managed to contact someone on both CBN and FOK to anonymously broadcast the ransom video sometime this week. I was thinking we can start tomorrow, before the kid gets sick or something. Larry can you get someone to sanitize the cell?" 

__

Larry nods and Charles's cell rings. I've always been puzzled as to what fucking provider he using down here, but it's the least questionable part of this bunker, anyways.

__

"I've got to take this call. Todd and Foster, if you want to discuss the script, you can. Message Tweed if we've missed anything," he orders.

__

Once he's gone, Foster kicks his feet up on the chair next to him, "I just don't understand why we have to film tomorrow. I think we deserve at least a _year's_ break after how well that heist went."

__

"As if that pathetic kid can survive outside his mansion for longer than a week. I'll give him a month tops."

__

"He's got quite a face on him. He takes after the whore wife."

__

"Which one?" Jay smirks and the rest laugh.

__

"I'm still trying to figure out which country they smuggled the kid from." Todd comments snidely.

__

"Did you forget who the father is, dumbass?" Foster retorts, "Frank Demir is the whitest guy out there. Plus, the son was born here. I checked it while scoping out their birth certificates." 

__

Todd rolls his eyes, "He's either a goat-fucker, a nigger, or a Latino spic. Whatever the fuck the mom was. He ain't no American."

__

"Shut the fuck up."

__

Todd says something lewd enough to make Foster punch his arm and retort, "Fucking faggot. The kid's a baby. Are you into that?"

__

"If he was a chick you know I'd ask Charles for him. Can you imagine Daddy Demir rolling around in his grave, knowing opposition's boning his kid?"

__

"Demir wouldn't give a shit." Jay snorts, "Drake was telling me how he passed his kid around like bait for those country club men at his business meetings."

__

"We need something like that here," Tweed guffaws loudly and I remember now, exactly why I declined a spot in the cabinet. When I get up, Foster makes a light-hearted joke about my "fuckin soft spot for kids", but I shrug and brush him off, deciding to head to the gym. 

__

I'm almost done my set of deadlifts for the day when that fucking annoying twink from yesterday is back.

__

"Hank!" He says happily, "Glad to see you!"

__

I inhale sharply, straightening my chest and standing with the 375 weight. I don't answer, huffing and holding for as long as I can before tossing the weight to the side with an enormous clang that reverberates through the room.

__

Looking visibly shaken, the kid waits this time quietly as I put the weights back before he continues. I suppress a laugh. I've been told I'm tall and intimidating-looking to most, but it's really the combination of modest fat streamlining a shit ton of muscle that makes me seem absolutely enormous. I don't look like those dehydrated Dorito-shaped muscle-building competitors, and in moments like this, I'm glad I don't.

"I have a message for you." he says finally.

__

"Oh," I reply snidely, "So you're the messenger boy now."

__

"For Executive Foster!" He says proudly, missing my sarcasm entirely, "He needs to meet with you. He's in the prison unit."

__

"Why doesn't he use the fucking talkie?"

__

"He says you never answer. He assumed you'd be in here, too."

__

I groan. "Tell him I've gotta take a shower first. I'll be there in ten." And the kid scurries off.

__

I take far too much time cleaning off and getting into a fresh jumpsuit before finally heading down. I'm surprised Foster's still waiting for me when I do arrive, but he's too busy setting up what I assume will be the backdrop for the video to show much irritation.

__

"Thanks for showing up, Princess." he says dryly and I smile.

__

"My pleasure."

__

"Thanks for dealing with the kid," he says honestly, "He's a lot more compliant than last time, and he trusts us more, too. That's essential for the filming aspect, you know. So what I was going to ask you, since Charles said you're in charge of the kid anyways, was can you get him his food and check up on him, health-wise for the week? Just for the filming period."

__

"Just because I'm in charge of making sure he doesn't run away doesn't mean I have to get him his food--"

__

"Look, only cabinet members are allowed to see the kid, and between you and I, I don't trust Todd and Tweed's nasty bitchasses around that kid. Jay's either. I need the kid to be unharmed, at least for this week. 

__

I didn't argue that.

__

"Besides, he hasn't been fed anything for a day-plus for trying to escape. He might like to see a familiar face. I understand you don't have... _fond_ memories with the Demir family but if it isn't too fucking hard to just check up on their kid, for me, I'd appreciate it."

__

"I've been reduced to a babysitter." I say sarcastically, but I head towards the Cafe unit regardless.

__

"Quit bitching," he retorts after me, "I know Charles hasn't given you any work since the heist."

__

"Still. I should've just let Jay take him back." I say and Foster sniggers.

__

On my way back, I drop by the head prison office to collect a key for the kid's cell. I enter in my information and the security code for the kid's cell, then wait for Charles to approve my transaction before I'm given a temporary key that'll time out in an hour. 

__

I wish I had Larry's red key, the master key, so I could enter the chamber at will without all the strenuous logging, but Larry's the only Montivello besides Boss Charles to own one. 

__

As I approach the kid’s cell, I notice his eyes are bloodshot red. But if he had been crying, his voice doesn't betray it. "Food," he says so happily when he sees me, it actually hurts for a moment. I drop the tray in front of him and he zeros in on the sandwich immediately. I make a mental note to bring him more next time.

__

He's really a cute kid, I notice now, with sandy skin and lots of curly, black hair. Even with the sweat and the ugly bruisings, he looks gentle and clean. I hadn't been around anybody who wasn't a Montivello or a cheap fuck for so long, a solid decade in fact, that I'd completely forgotten how little other people could be. Jasper had been a small kid too, but this kid had to be much tinier.

__

It'd been a decade since Jasper'd been buried. His casket had been so small. Frank Demir had been there with me that day, putting a hand on my shoulder as he told me he was sorry and I wanted to destroy him because he'd just gotten a baby boy of his own. This kid.

__

When I look at the kid's face now, I see his father in it. But his father isn't the only person he reminds me of.

__

I swallow hard.

__

"I've seen you before," he says after a while, looking up mid-bite.

__

"Close your mouth and eat."

__

He does, and I notice I've left bruises from the last time I'd grabbed his wrists.

__

"Are you the only one allowed in here?" He asks a little while later, with a mouth full of the second sandwich. I'm surprised he's noticed that. 

__

"It's my job to convince the rest of them that you're more docile now," I say a little irately, "They want you to film a video for them."

__

"A video?" He asks, "For a ransom?"

__

"Yeah. To let the public know you're well and alive. The boss wants some money."

__

He thoughtfully sets the food down, "Will you let me go after that?"

__

"I don't--I don't think so kid. I don't think you're leaving here," and I'm irked I didn't lie. 

__

I can actually see the pupils of his eyes contract before he just blinks hard, like it's all this huge surprise, like he what did he really expect, honesty, and I think he's about to fucking cry when he composes himself in that same minute, mumbling, "Thanks for the food", before pushing the tray back towards me and lying on his side, facing the wall.

__

I grab the tray and leave right after that. I had didn’t have to leave so fast, but I suddenly felt suffocated in that cell. 

__

I spend the rest of the day meeting up the other Montivellos, acquainting myself with some of the new recruits and chatting up some of the older ones, ones I hadn't talked to in months. I had never let myself be seen by the older cohorts, out of both boredom and spite, but without the heist to distract me and the kid grinding a hole in the back of my head, I needed badly to be distracted by worthless company. We discuss future goals and personal stories and I indulgently allow them to praise and idolize my work, as if I was proud of it at all. It was nice to an extent though, being able to finally get out of the lab and really catch up with the brotherhood I'd helped build, but at the same time, I was already beginning to miss the sense of purpose and control that planning the heist gave me. I missed not feeling guilty or empty.

__

Just as I'm heading back to my bunker, I get a message from Charles:

__

**I need you. We're filming now**

__

I'd let myself forget we'd be recording today, and I realize I've been dreading this.

__

I've never visited the prison unit as much in the last five years as I have this week. I enter the section where the kid's corridor is to see the entire place set up with cameras, a backdrop and a chair in the middle.

__

Foster looks pissed the minute he sees me and I take a step back as he advances on me, "I thought you dealt with the kid, what the _fuck_ , Hank."

__

_Oh no._

__

Boss Charles pulls him away. "Hank's fine. It's not his fault. We starved the kid after all. He's going to be at least a bit sorry-looking. I'll go talk to him."

__

I notice Foster's eyes widen slightly at that and I placidly put a hand on Charles's shoulder, "Cha-- _Boss_. I don't think you should be the one to--"

__

Charles turns back and says archly, "Would you like to join me?" He continues to head down the narrow corridor before I can respond and I follow hastily after, not knowing what to do.

__

The kid's large eyed when he spots Charles approach his cell. "I hope you remember me from last time." He says as he enters the cell, his voice low, yet gentle, like a snake charmer. I've never seen Charles this benevolent. "You do understand why I kept you in a cell, right?" 

__

The kid backs up into the base of his bed but Charles is already beside him, gently grasping his face by his chin, tilting his face so he can better see it from every angle. "It wasn't to prevent you from running away or to prevent you from hurting my men. I was to prevent any of my men from hurting _you_."

__

Max is smart enough to remain perfectly still, even when Charles is rolling up his sleeves and digging his fingers into the bruises to assess how bad they were, and I can tell it hurts.

__

Charles hums, "Where are you from, child?"

__

"New York."

__

He chuckles, "If you say so. Tell me... Max, is it? how old are you?"

__

"Ten."

__

"How sweet."

__

I watch his small chest rise and fall.

__

"How badly do you want to go home?"

__

Max doesn't answer him. He looks to me instead, as if affirmation. Like I was some degree of better than the rest of them.

__

"Your parents--"

__

Max's poker face fails.

__

"--I can return you to them. Return all of you to the life you knew. You just have to work with me."

__

Max's face blanks for a moment as he loses composure. I can actually see his pupils dilate. He mouth opens to say something, but he can't. He stands up on his knees and his open-mouthed smile just gets bigger and bigger until he just audibly gasps and then laughs. His eyes are reddening. He cries out again, breathlessly, and the rawness of his emotion has me weak. Charles shifts back a little bit when the kid takes a deep breath and the words all gush out of his mouth at once:

__

"They're alive? They're alive! They're alive! Oh my god, oh my god! Are they safe? Where are they! Are they fine? Where are they--"

__

_He loves his parents_ , I think, and I don't know why I'm acting like it's hard-hitting news. _Not everyone has a rapist father, dumbass. Rich fucks like him have nice parents._

__

He's seconds away from breaking into sloppy tears when Charles gently takes him by the face again, "Of course, child. I wouldn't go through the struggle of keeping you alive and not them! I just need some compliance from all of you for now."

__

"What should I do? What do you want-- what can I--" 

__

The boss shushes him gently and takes his arm to pull him off the bed, "I need you to film a video, you see."

__

"Oh, he's told me all about it." Max says, pointing at me.

__

"Hank," Charles corrects and when the boy repeats it, it resonates with me:

__

"Hank."

__

"Very good. Now follow me."

__

The kid follows us down the corridor with absolute most happy expression I've ever seen on a person. 

__

I can see Foster visibly relax once he sees us, probably because the kid wasn't beaten to shit or anything. Max is seated on the wooden chair in the middle and I wipe his face in a sloppy attempt to make him look more appealing. 

__

Max smiles for the camera when Foster asks him to, and it's a little lopsided, since the facial scarring on one of his temples makes it physically difficult to. But Charles doesn't lose his shit and I'm relieved. The kid looks vulnerable and gentle and little on the huge chair, just like Foster wanted.

__

_Ready. Set. Go._

__

"Dear Town of Tammany, and the rest of the nation, my name is Max," he says placidly, word-by-word like he's been told to, "I am the Demir's heir and I'm being held hostage by the Montivellos. I've been here for two days and I need your help to get out, please. Boss Charles says he wants five million by tomorrow at sundown at the Tampa beach boardwalk. He asks for cash only and no authorities and he promises to return me unharmed."

__

Max continues to recite everything he's told to obediently and by the end of the session, he's reopened a cut on his temple with all his facial movements, but he's smiling regardless. 

__

Foster sighs thankfully once the last scene is cut, and the rest of his company begins to pack up everything. 

__

Charles is more than pleased. "Stefan, take the kid back and patch him up. Foster, get your unit to edit the video and get it ready to go by the end of the day. I want it to air by 8/9 central, when everyone's watching.

__

I really want to get out.

__

I tell Charles I'd left some newbie Montivellos awaiting instruction on some weaponry they were building, and that's a fucking lie, and I escape to my lab again. I avoid the look he gives me.

__

In the empty lab, a room I'd lock myself up in for days without break to complete my projects, I find nothing to do. I'm angry I have nothing left to work on. 

__

I run my hands through my hair in frustration. This heist is what I'd lost days of sleep over. This is what I've dreamed of for years. Why wasn't I satisfied? 

__

I had never wanted to deal with the Demirs again, and I wouldn't have had to if it wasn't for Charles's stubbornness, and I cursed him now for my irrational malcontent. All I wanted now was another mind-numbing mission to calibrate and structure, another goal to work towards until I mentally dissociated.

__

I'm still in that lab, neurotically organizing and alphabetizing every last tool when I hear obnoxious sounds of celebration from outside and am informed via walkie soon after that the video had aired successfully. 

__

_With the amount of money and fucking time I spent behind every last detail_ , I think snidely, _it's not surprising everything worked out._

__

I craved distraction.

__

I hit the gym again, deciding to submit yet again to the burn of the weights. I realize, then, that I lacked any real hobbies. I'm halfway into a brain-numbing burpee set when another gym rat avidly informs me that the Mayor had just publicly confirmed he'd deliver the money.

__

_Fucking wonderful._

__

I wonder why I want nothing to do with this.

__

The next day is complete chaos as the company prepares to retrieve the prize. The bureau keeps to their word and they don't flood the place with authorities. They do, however, station local Tampa authorities near the drop zone for a surprise jump, but Charles had made a deal with them prior, exactly the reason why he'd chosen Tampa, so the security cameras are already disabled, and when Todd drives by to collect the cash, they politely inform him that the bag was bugged. 

__

Charles grabs one of the Shö prisoners we've had for a while for the next step, injecting him with one of the trackers I'd stolen from the LAPD. Usually, microchips are activated with a pin code, but these chips were specifically rewired so that it only becomes active in a body when the heart stops. It was supposed to be used to track undercover agents only when they were in trouble or killed, since trackers that were active all the time were a lot easier to detect by the enemy and unnecessary for most of an active mission. They were emergency last resorts, to signal that a mission had gone horribly wrong. Charles would use it for suicide missions or in this case, throw the police off our location. 

__

Max was supposed to be dropped off at the Dulles International Airport that following afternoon, but of course, he wasn't, and I can imagine the public shock when the authorities would chase the tracker across states to find a dead nobody instead. When a quarter of the cash is split among the cabinet to boost morale, I don't bother to go collect my share. I visit the kid instead.

__

 

__

——

__

"So did the video work?"

__

"I mean, we got the money and everything." I say, handing him another sandwich.

__

"So what's next?" He says. There's a smudge of mustard on his nose and when he goes to wipe it, he misses it entirely. 

In the midst of my resentment and guilt, it's hard for me to understand whether I really liked the kid or not. I shrug, "We do another one."

__

"Did your boss talk about--like when I'd be able to--see my parents? Are they doing ransom videos too?"

__

My head hurts. "I don't know kid. He doesn't tell me that stuff."

__

Once he finishes everything on the tray, I move it away so I can wipe down his facial wounds again, and he doesn't protest. It's healing a lot better now.

__

"Lean forward for me," I say, and he does. He looks uncomfortable, tipped-forward, half-off the bed. There's a dark, hand-shaped bruise that lines his throat like a necklace. I blow over the skin where I've put the antiseptic and he squints against the fanning, lips parting. It's been awhile since I've had to do this for anyone.

__

"You're married," he says suddenly, a small hand tapping the gold ring on the hand I've used to steady him.

__

"That's not the wedding finger."

__

"It's still a wedding ring," he says, inspecting it, "It's got a little diamond. And writing on the side."

__

"You've got a sharp eye," I say sardonically, moving my arm away, out of view. "I'm not married right now."

__

"I never want to get married," he says with finality.

__

I don't either. "Why?" I ask.

__

"I feel like--people only get married to get something they want. No one really loves each other. My parents did that." He crosses his legs and pushes himself back into the bed, "But when we all get back together, I think they'll realize where they went wrong. Brusey Co was what drove them apart and they won't have that anymore to distract them."

__

I get up, hiding the sudden aggravation the best I can, "I have to go." I ignore his bewildered expression and leave like the misanthropic fuck I was.

__

I considered myself an unemotional robot for most of the year, a loyal robot who fucked, planned and killed for Charles's end goal. The boss appreciated that about me-- that I had no limits or attachments or needs. The man in me appreciated it too, that the only want I had was to be given something to busy myself with at all times.

__

I was unemotional for most of the year, that is.

__

When Larry enters our shared dorm, he freezes instantly once he smells the smoke. He closes the door immediately, hissing, "Are you fucking kidding me? Charles is going to kill you."

__

"Fuck off." I say, moving the butt away from my mouth, "I need a minute."

__

Larry sighs irately and pours himself a cup of coffee. He's downing it when he stops suddenly and sets the cup down, "It's Jasper's anniversary soon, isn't it?"

__

I shut my eyes, "The last thing Gwen had told me was that I was responsible for Jasper now."

__

I'm not sure Larry gets the connection. "What happened to Amy?" He asks, "I thought you liked her?"

__

"I beat the bitch after she stole my car. I took it back and left her in Cali."

__

"Good," he says, decidedly. He wafts the smoke away from his face before sitting on the worn couch across from me, "You always get real moody when it's around that year."

__

"It's worse this year." 

__

"I can tell. It's probably Demir Jr's fault, giving you flashbacks to your time at Brusey's. Do you know what Charles is going to do with him next?" 

__

"I don't know," I say, rubbing my face. I'm so exhausted and I haven't done anything but bitch and moan all day.

__

"You need to take a break, H." Larry says with finality. "I think the heist's exhausted you the fuck out. It's all just bad timing. Didn't you tell me about that Sho invite? Go deal with it now. Use it to take a breather. I hear the drive to WY is incredible."

__

"I don't think that's what--"

__

"I'm not giving you a choice, fucker. I'm tired of hearing you moan and bitch. Go ask Charles now so you can hightail it out by tonight. It'll do you good." he says, and I give him a grateful smile.

__

I message Charles, asking him for permission to visit him in his central office, but he messages me back, telling me to meet him in the prison unit instead. It's unreasonably late for him to be in there.

__

I find him in the head office of the prison unit with Stefan and his crew, setting up some medical equipment and gadgetry. I don't want to even think about what poor victim they were going to torture next.

__

Charles is on the phone, but he dismisses the caller once he spots me, asking, "Hank, what's the issue? I thought you'd be asleep by now."

__

"I just had a request was all."

__

"Please," he says benevolently, pocketing the phone.

__

"May I take my leave tonight to go deal with Gavin?"

__

"Oh," He looks taken off guard, "We were going to film the second random video tonight."

__

_Goody, another show where the kid monotonously reads index cards_. "Will you really need me for that? Max's become a lot more docile and---"

__

"Oh that's not it. I just need as much help as possible. The kid's only a virgin once."

__

At first, I thought I didn't I hear him right, "I'm sorry?"

__

"Well you'd know the plan if you made it to the cabinet meeting today."

__

"I was--busy--"

__

"It's fine, forget that for now. See, Hank, for the second random video we have to drive the public into a frenzy. Something disgraceful enough for us to ask for absolutely anything."

__

I don't like where this is going.

__

"The plan is to wake him up at the crack of dawn," he continues, "Take some medical staff, sweet talk him a bit, play up his innocence for the camera, and then fuck him. Have you seen the size of that kid? It'll rip him in half! And halfway through, we'll cut his left arm off. He's left-handed, right? That's what it looked like to me. Anyways, the kid's too handsy, we've got to _cut_ him down, somehow!" Charles is laughing loudly at his own joke and I suddenly don't recognize the man in front of me. 

__

"Boy, would the public would break seeing that," he continues, "It's the perfect mix of violence and sacrilegious sex, exactly the kind of shock-value we need to be able to demand the greater things like, the FBI's history on the Kæ's trade program or even what information they have on the Kæ's ex-leader." 

__

"You're--you're doing this to the kid?"

__

"Oh _no_ , Hank, I'm not doing shit," Charles looks a little disgusted, "Getting all disheveled like that and letting the world see my face? No, thank-you. I'm getting the biggest man I have and masking his face. Tweed maybe, since you're leaving I guess. He needs to be as large as possible so he can dwarf the child and fucking traumatize whoever views it for life. The end result'll be madly successful."

__

I've never been the kind of person to be squeamish, but I feel something in my stomach relative to it.

__

"Hank?"

__

"That's incredible, boss," I say, recovering quickly. "You know I was thinking about using the kid as a political hostage for blackmail from the absolute beginning. This is incredible. But I was just wondering, what happens if the government refuses to hand you FBI documents. We've lied about giving him back already, afterall."

__

"He's got more limbs dosent he?" Charles says. When he laughs again, I can see his gold molars glint in the dim prison light and I wonder how he lost them.

__

I wonder if I ever knew Charles at all.

__

"I'm--I'm sorry for missing the last cabinet meeting," I say, "I just haven't been feeling myself for the last couple days."

__

"I can tell. The heist really took the energy out of you, I guess."

__

"Somewhat. It's actually Jasper's anniversary in a few days, and I've just been thinking a lot is all."

__

"I'm sorry," he says solemnly, "You've come a long way--with the situation with your father and then with Jasper. Someday, you'll look back on everything and consider it a blessing. Look at all the good you've done so far. We wouldn't have ever gotten the kid without you. The kid would never trust us without you."

__

"Of course," I say, and he smiles and repeats what he told me the night I'd returned from the heist. The sentence that fucked me up when I handed him the unconscious kid and he'd said: "You're responsible for him now."

__

I had failed again. 

__

"Have fun with Gavin," he says, as I begin to back up, "Are you leaving right now?"

__

"In a little bit."

__

"Good," he says, going back to meet with Stefan, and I don't feel in control of my voice when he says, "Meet with me before you do."

__

Larry's still in the bunker when I come in and he asks almost immediately, "What's wrong?"

__

"The kid," I say, taking a seat, pressing my hands to my face, "The ransom video--tonight--Charles is doing it."

__

"So?" He snaps, trying understand why I was so distraught, and then, suddenly, his face clears, "Oh my fucking--Hank, no. I thought the kid was giving you flashbacks because he was a Demir, not because he was a fucking _kid_. You feel guilty because Charles told you were responsible for him? Hank, fucking _grow up_ , he meant you've gotta keep the shit in check not rear him."

__

I clench my eyes shut and drive the ball of my palms into my eyes. I think I'm going to vomit.

__

"It's been ten years Hank, it wasn't your fault! You can't see Jasper in every fucking kid, God, that's so unhealthy! You need to--"

__

"Fucking chill, did I ever say the kid was Jasper? No! Sorry I've got a soft spot for kids and don't want to see them raped and amputated on live television." And oh God, I feel sick again.

__

"He is?"

__

"Didn't you go to the board meeting?" I mimic Charles's voice, exasperatedly.

__

"No. Todd and I missed. We were debugging the money. And that's pretty disgusting, even for Charles. But I mean, what did you expect?"

__

"I just--God, Larry I'm just reliving it all again."

__

Larry pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers and takes a deep breath, "What you have to do Hank, is disassociate Jasper from Max. They're pretty fucking different. Fucking try that for me, and you'll be fine."

__

"His father was like mines too apparently," I say and Larry's anger evaporates, 

__

"Really? No fucking way. Daddy Demir was like Mega?"

__

"That's what he made it sound like."

__

"What'd he say?"

__

"That his parents fuckin hated each other too."

__

"Lots of parents hate each other, Hank." He sounds exasperated now. 

__

"It's the way he said it--and--I don't know. I don't have an excuse, Larry, I'm being a fucking pussy."

__

"I'm sorry." He says and his sympathy is worse than the anger. I needed to feel wrong. "You can't--the kid's done for, man." I grab my duffel and begin to head for the door, "Stop thinking about it. He's not going to die--"

__

"Oh it's pretty fucking close--"

__

"At least you're leaving before you have to see anything happen to the kid. And hey, he might even be gone by the time you come back!"

__

I swallow my nausea. "I'm going to go finish my workout before I leave."

__

He lets me leave, and his thoughtful silence is unnerving.

__

I'm the only one in the gym. My muscles still hurt from the last workout, but I push through anyways, taking my time to force perfect form, taking my time to force perfect performance. I missed being able to run for miles and miles outside my cabin before I got stuck down in this pressurized bunker. I work myself into a headache and hours later, when my body is burning and all my muscles are cramping, I finally decide to hit the showers and head back. 

__

Once I'm in a fresh jumpsuit, I check my locker one last time before deciding to head for Gavin's. 

__

It's void of any mail. The only thing in it is the keys to my Cadillac, the Shö's invitation and...the red master key.

__

My heart stops. I read the letter tied in between the loop.

__

**Grab the kid and bail. I'll cover.**

__

_No. No, no, no--_

__

I want to punch something. I want to beat something. I want to crush Larry to an absolute pulp. I didn't have the time or the self-control for this. I couldn't just take the kid. I couldn't just go against Charles like that. Where would I take him anyways?

__

But I know, with Larry's key and the sovereign control he has behind security, he could easily mask the kid's disappearance as a Shö break in. He could cover for me until I returned. 

__

Larry always understood why I was the way I was.

__

I feel strangled. I know what I want to do, but God, _dear God,_ not like this. If Charles ever found out, being killed in the most violent way possible would be the best future for me.

__

I feel myself, slowly and automatically, pocketing the key instead of putting it back in the locker. I'm mentally calculating the time it would take to get to the prison unit, to grab my stuff and then grab the kid, and I calculate I'd be able to hightail it out of there right before dawn if I left exactly now.

__

I pocket the letter and the invite and dash for the elevator. I needed to pick up my talkie from the central office first. I feel something undefinable coursing through me. I'm mortified when I realize it's excitement. 

__

There's no one in the halls and the lights have been dimmed for the night. Except for the sound of the central generator, the corridors are deafeningly silent.

__

I'm heading for the main conference room when suddenly, Charles materializes from the corner hallway. I just about jump out of my skin.

__

"Hank!" He says, and it takes me a minute to understand he's smiling graciously at me, not accusingly. "I'm glad I was able to catch you before you left. I won't be able to contact you via talkie once you're out of the bunker. It's not secure, you know, since anyone could tap into it."

__

"Of course." I say, and I'm positively shivering.

__

"I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all the work you've done for us. Even with your anniversarial crisis you've managed to pull through. I understand all this Demir business is bringing back memories.

__

"I'm fine." I reply, robotically.

__

If Charles notices anything is off, he doesn't say it. He simply puts a hand on my shoulder and says, "Look Hank. I want you to understand that Jasper's death wasn't your fault, even if you were responsible for him at the time. I just want to tell you, that if you ever need anything, to come to me directly. Never hold back, okay?"

__

I look the man I've always admired most in the eyes and say, "Always."

__

When I turn to leave, I feel as if I'm leaving something behind me forever. Charles doesn't follow me as I board the elevator and head for the prison complex, and I half expect him to, to read my mind clearly or maybe sense the master key in my pocket.

__

_He never understood me,_ I realize.

There's no light in the prison complex when I enter, but I've become so familiarized with the chamber in the last few days, that I'm able to breeze my way through and unlock his door easily. 

__

I put one hand on the kid's mouth and catch the immediate fists that come up with my other hand. 

__

"Max." I say and it's the first time I've ever called him by his name. "It's me."

__

He stills and squints in the dark, "Hank?"

__

"I'm here to bust you out."

__

"I.. what? Why...are..?" His voice is thick with sleep.

__

"They're going to kill you tonight. Right before dawn."

__

I've scared the sleep out of him now.

__

"You're coming with me." I say for the second time that week.

__

_I'm responsible for you now._

  

 

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback is food for the soulz


	3. How to Get Good at Life

Picking the kid up and tucking him into the thick folds of my jacket, I back out the cell before locking it carefully. Lightheaded with raw fear and adrenaline, I half-stumble, half-dash back out the narrow corridor to the main hall, and then dash entirely out of the prison complex itself. My heart is in my throat, hammering so loudly against my chest that I’m positive the human cargo pressed uncomfortably up my side can hear it clearly. I can't remember the last time I'd felt this kind of fear. I'm half-expecting the place to explode in alarms. When I hear nothing sound, I hesitantly move towards the elevator. After swiping the company key and punching in the final code, the elevator doesn't move left or right but up. As we rise, I feel like I left my stomach somewhere below. 

The doors open to the parking garage, a dark, open-styled building lit only by the faint rays of light ebbing from the horizon. The hit of the cold, fresh, dawn air feels surreal. I set the kid down. 

I leave my company key in the elevator before I leave. I won't need it again, I suppose, for the next few months. The doors shut behind us with finality. The sky is a dangerous napalm orange. The sun would begin to rise soon.

The roof-less top floor of the parking garage is deathly silent. I can't hear the morning birds nor our footsteps, not even my own breathing. The only sound I can hear is the car keys jangling in my pocket with every step, and this kind of silence sounds like freedom. 

Max's quiet beside me, looking over the building edge in a sort of profound awe. You can see the hazy lights of the neighboring town at this height. It's all so cold--the air, the sky, the concrete around us-- all except the hand wrapped around mines, grounding me.

I breathe in the fresh air harshly, just so grateful and apprehensive at the time.

Before we get in, I yank the kid in front of me, kneel over him, and check the back of his ears and neck. He looks at me warily as I inspect his hair and shoes next. 

"Check yourself for any trackers they might have put on you," I order him, instructing him step-by-step, on patting down the rest of his body.

Once we're both cleared, we get into my car, which smells like home, and finally drive out. 

The desert road transitions into the highway before I even notice. I don't think I had really yet internalized exactly what I'd done. I'm too distracted, too hyper-aware. Here I was, a wanted man, waltzing around with a wanted kid, someone who could be sent to the chair instantly. And if Charles were to ever find out--

But I trusted that Larry could cover for me until I got the kid into police custody, and he had all the tools at his fingertips to make Max's disappearance look like a Shö infiltration. He could keep the facade easily until I returned, and I trusted in his abilities.

I didn't deserve Larry.

The morning mist becomes visible as the sun finally begins to rise. "Where are we going?" Max asks finally.

"I have a house in Carlsbad," I say, "We can hide there until both the cops and the gang chill enough off your parents or relatives for me to return you to one of them without them catching me. Both groups are going to be on a massive manhunt in a few hours."

He's silent for a while, before asking, "Where's Carlsbad?"

"New Mexico."

He looks troubled, and I smirk, "That's not as far as you think, kid. We're in Texas now."

"...Texas?"

"Hmm-hmm. You got smuggled right down the east coast. Carlsbad's a great place. It's right down the Pecos River and it's real scenic." I begin to ramble to ease my tension, "It's far away from Las Vegas, too, so we don't have to deal with all that traffic and noise."

Max listens to it all, even when I'm reiterating the same concepts, even after I've run out of words to say. We watch the fog clear and the sun rise against the desert mountains on either side of the highway.

Max says quietly, a bit later, "I've never been outside of New York before."

I'm surprised that makes me laugh.

After a few hours, I take an exit and drop by a grocery store to try to buy up on whatever it would take to take sustain a kid, but I'm quickly left disoriented. It's been years since I did anything as domestic as shop for someone else. I never had even shopped for my own son.

As I scoured the shelves, I felt an uncharacteristic paranoia manifest. _Him!_ I could envision someone yell, _That's the man that killed the pharmaceuticals!_

But of course no one did, and I hightail it out of there as soon as I can. My objective was to simply get a decent blanket-set, but I ended up grabbing a pack of kiddie juice packs and a candy bar too. I just assumed that the kid would like sugar; it was the only thing that came to mind when I thought of what he might want. _Ten-year-olds are probably pretty low maintenance_ , I tell myself.

Max waits for me in the car patiently, and I'm half-surprised he hasn't run off yet. We drive for most of the day, and when the sky begins to take on a pink and orange tint, I take the exit, plugging in the directions to a national park that I knew was somewhat close. I thought Max'd fallen asleep by then, but I turn to see him staring out the window. "Hungry?" I ask. I'm not sure whether he's nodded or not, but I turn into the drive-through of the nearest burger joint regardless. 

"Can I have the combo with the double bacon burger and...," I look back at Max briefly, "...two kiddie meals."

Max frowns when I hand him the obnoxiously grinning box. "Trying to save money?"

I'd gotten it because it had the milk and fruit, because I thought that was healthier, but I don't tell him that.

"I'm kidding." Max says. He hugs the packed bag of food, a bag that's very nearly the size of him, as I drive until we reach the mountainous park.

"We're gonna have to sleep in my car," I tell him as we climb the summit road, "I'd would get us a motel, but I don't have any identification on me."

"That's fine."

I slow near a secluded park overhang that oversees the mountain park beautifully. I open his door, and with one hand, take the bag from his lap, and with the other hand, pick him up. His arms wrap around my neck. His sweatshirt smells like fries. 

I climb over the low metal guard and seat him and the food down on the grass beside me. I'm surprised how much I appreciate the view. It been awhile since I've done anything that kept me outdoors. It reminds me of when Larry and our friends used to go hiking in college, when we could live off protein bars and get high all day. The setting sun is gigantic a blood-red wheel, and we're so high up, the sun seems like it's descending below the mountains right across from us. 

The burger's meat is thickly layered in fat and salt and the cheese has seared into the wrapper. It felt like forever since I had something this indulgent. I hated bunker food.

I can already hear the night birds leaving their nests, their screaming echoing threefold in and over the rocky crevices. In the dimming light, the tiny, tightly closed buds in the bushes below us are beginning to unfurl into white night flowers.

"How long will we be on the low for?" Max asks.

I take an obnoxiously big bite to delay answering him, "I'm sure Charles is fucking delirious with rage right now. A friend of mines is covering for us though, and while that'll barely stop Charles from finding you eventually, I'll be gone by then and should have you under the FBI's custody too. So--," I take another bite, "...months I guess."

"So my parents aren't with him?"

"He was bluffing. I'm not sure where they are now. They might be in police custody."

"Shouldn't your boss's next move be to try and kill them? It's the logical thing to do now, right?"

"I suppose."

He takes the takeout bag and promptly throws up in it, then ties the bag and throws it over the mountain ledge. He washes his mouth out with the canteen.

"Do you want any juice?" I ask after he's done spitting, handing him the kiddie juice packs. He takes the little fruit-flavored boxes and finishes three without complaint.

The sun’s set and everything in the valley below that was grey is now turning blue. I can hear the sounds of what must be a million insects crowing in the growing dark. The light is pale enough for me to be able to see the moon and the setting sun at the same time now, and I can even see the beginnings of the what must be an incredible view of the stars. 

I remembered when I was little, my mother had taught me how to recognize Mars and Venus from the star trail, and I think I see them now. 

I want to show the kid the planets too, but I suppose he's got other stuff on his mind. He's silent and seems much more interested in studying the grass below him than admiring the sky.

I yawn obnoxiously, standing up and kicking our trash over, "Time to camp." I say sarcastically, "It's probably gonna get cold up here, but if I park anywhere else overnight with a car like this, you bet your ass we'll get robbed."

Climbing in through the trunk, I lay the back seats flat before layering the floor with the blanket set I'd bought. The big and boxy style of the Escalade comes in handy now: the back trunk is almost the size of a mattress now. It's a damn big car, pretty much the largest that cars can get before it’s a van, but it'll still definitely be a squeeze for me. The carpet is gritty as hell and I regret not getting it vacuumed prior. 

I notice him shivering already. "I can't leave the car's heater on." I'm not really sure why I feel like explaining everything to him. "If the gas runs out up here, we're fucked. So use your sweater as a blanket."

He pulls off his sweatshirt and just kind of awkwardly stands there in a cute, little, yellow camp shirt. He folds the sweatshirt into a pillow. 

I take my gun holster and jacket off, making sure to remove all my weapons before laying down and motioning him over.

He climbs in and closes the trunk, then kind of uncomfortably lays on his back. I pull the sweatshirt from under him and toss it aside, pulling him closer to myself and the comforter. There was no fucking way I could afford to house both a wanted and a sick kid. He faces me now, resting his head on my bicep and I'm close enough to count his freckles. 

"How safe are we here?" he asks.

"Here? For now, pretty safe."

"Outside of here? What about tomorrow?"

"I have the entire American government after me and you have an entire underground gang after you. You tell me."

Even in the moonlight, I can see goosebumps rise on every bare inch of his skin, including his cheeks. "Stay close to my jacket to stay warm," I say.

I'm surprised at how clean he smells. His hair smells like baby shampoo. His warm breath pants against my bare throat.

I'd truly forgotten how small other people could be. My bicep had to have been bigger than his entire torso. His tiny hands are pressed open against my chest, and soon enough, he relaxes. His huge curly mess of black hair is nested up under my chin. 

The only person I'd slept next to in my life was Gwen. We'd finally managed to find a place to rent, and the only furniture we had under our names was a couch, a nightstand, and a single queen mattress. Jasper, a five-month-old at that time, slept between us, insulated with pillows so that we wouldn’t accidentally roll on top of him. He was the only one in the house that ate that night, mostly because breast-milk was free.

It was different now, however, with this kid pressed up against my side. I couldn't tell if I liked him or not, in the midst of my bitter resentment and growing fondness. The truth was that I was risking my life for him-- whether this was all really for him or not was something I hadn't even begun to process-- and I think to myself that I’ll have to make my mind up some day. 

When I finally do fall asleep, I'm dimly aware that the kid doesn't.

\-------

 

I dream of black. I dream of Boss Charles leaning over a kid, cutting off his limbs as he rapes him. I dream he films him. I dream that the kid is screaming and I dream that it's Jasper.

 

\--------

The first thing I feel when I wake up is the wetness of tears on my arm and it's not mines. Max's eyes are squeezed shut, as if forcing his tears back, and it's a futile move. It's sort of a beautiful expression.

"Whats wrong?" I ask.

His eyes fly open, and the tears freeze. 

"Are you in pain?"

"No."

Tear-wet, curly bits of hair stick to his face and I move them away. I note that he doesn't flinch anymore when I touch him, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

My head hurts and I'm more tired than I'd like to admit, so I snap, "Straighten the fuck up. What's wrong?" 

You've never seen eyes like his. They're icy and translucent against coppery skin. They're the biggest I've ever seen and they're staring at me blankly now.

"I don't know," he admits. His voice is raspy like he’s sick. "It's everything. I was just thinking."

 _Oh._ "It'll be fine," I poorly console him, "We'll be at the house in no time with wifi, food, and a warm bed. All the good stuff as we lay low for a couple months maybe, then I'll get you back to your parents or relatives or whoever, and everything will be back to how it used to be."

He blinks slowly, "Except for David."

"Who?"

"Never mind. What about you after all this?"

I hadn't really thought it through yet, how I'd get back. Just because I was covered didn't mean I was scott-free, "I don't know."

"What do you get out of this?"

I laugh bitterly, " What did you think I got out of this?"

"I-- was afraid you--", he pauses and he looks like whatever he wants to say is physically difficult to.

"Spit it out," I say

"I-- the night I'd been taken, your boss, he told me he'd--" His voice breaks and he sounds strangled. His hands have instinctively risen to the hand-shaped bruise around his throat as if he's trying to better demonstrate what Charles had told him. "He said he'd--do-- that he wanted--". He can't speak now. There's this fear in his eyes and I understand then what Charles had told him, even if Max doesn't.

That's why he was crying. I feel sick for reasons I didn't want to think about yet. "I'm not going to fucking touch you, and if you ever mention that again, I'll slit your fucking throat and let you bleed out here."

"I didn't mean--that you--" he takes in a deep breath, "I just didn't know why you were helping me."

It's completely silent except for buzz and chirping of the birds and insects outside. The warm mountain light is filtering in through the windows. I bask in the warmth of it all.

 _I really fucking don’t know either._

I knew I should get up and start driving again, to avoid the park police and to stay on whatever mental schedule I'd prepared. But I'm oddly sublime at the moment.

Max's staring past me, at my shoulder, at my pale pink puckered scar. "What happened?"

I laugh, "I was shot. 

He looks visibly shaken and I don't know how to tell him that wasn't the first time, "How?" he manages.

"Gas station hold up." I say, "It really wasn't all that bad. Just worse than a graze."

"Did it hurt?" He asks.

"Of course, it hurt. I'd never felt anything like it. But I passed out soon after, so I wasn't in pain for that long."

"Oh." is all he says. 

I kick aside the blankets and pop open the back trunk. The intense heat hits me almost immediately, but it feels amazing coupled with the mountain breeze. I take out a cigarette and light it.

Max crawls up beside me and sits on the sill, breathing in the second-hand smoke. "If the other Montivellos find me," he asks after a beat, "--would they shoot me too?"

I pause. "No," I say, and it's not a lie.

Max looks pained and it's actually a little amusing. I get this cruel urge, suddenly, to leave him on the mountain, scare him a bit. But the sadistic whim passes and I just crush my clip and climb over to the driver's seat to turn on the car, "Time to hit the road again."

Max frowns, closing the trunk and climbing into the passenger seat, "I wish I could take a shower."

"There's a lake down the road, princess."

"No thanks."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter got far too long, so excuse the mad awkward cut and transition to chapter four. Just consider chapter three and four as the same, even if they both show radically different sides of Hank


	4. Moral Decay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the man's a monster and he needs to die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rape and violence my dudes if you didn't read the tags scadaddle now

"There's a lake down the road, princess."

"No thanks."

Once we're on the highway, Max surprisingly begins to talk more. A lot more. Like me, I can tell he rambles when he's tense, but I notice a strange sense of growing comfort in his stress. In any other circumstance, I would've kindly told him to shut the fuck up by now, but I drown him out and let him continue. I add to his conversation too, even, as if I'm listening, and I'm cruelly satisfied when I say something mean enough to make his smile disappear. I would never admit it, but I'm disappointed when he falls asleep and I'm left in silence again. 

By the fifth hour, I'm _fucking tired_ of the sight of the highway and I think to myself that I never want to see one ever again. I feel like my blood's cementing in my veins and my limbs are actually aching from inactivity, but the worst part of it all is that in my growing restless and irritation I've pitched a half-tent, and I'm not really even sure why and how. There was no way I was getting aroused just by driving. It was definitely embarrassing and irritating to say the least, and I was really glad Max had fallen asleep by the time I'd noticed it. But I've had random chubs before, and accounting for my sleep deprived on top of the restlessness, I wasn't too surprised.

I decide all I needed to do was find a gas station bathroom to blow off some steam in, once I got closer to the house, maybe do some push-ups or jumping jacks after, to get my blood flowing.

After what seems like an eternity more, I finally see the WELCOME TO NEW MEXICO sign, and I take the next exit.

At first, I don't recognize the rural town I've driven into, too antsy for a gas station, but once I see the sign welcoming me to the town of Hobbs, the memories come flooding back. Larry and I would frequent a bar at this town whenever we were in the state. The barely family-friendly diner had just the solution I was looking for.

"Hungry?" I ask, when I finally pull into the busy parking lot, patting Max's cheek to wake him up. 

He's surprised when I open his door, "Is it safe for me to be out?"

"We're out of state now, kid," I say pulling him out, "We'll be fine."

It's more run down than I remember and a lot less exciting-looking, but I'm fucking starving and whatever's on the grill smells amazing. Plus, one of the waitresses on shift is a tempting blonde in a real-tight, lace-trimmed Dixie dress, so I decide to work with what I've got. 

I wink at her as I come in, and I see her take in the only two things I've noticed women care about--my height and my build. My physique was in no way optimal: I'm simply enormous and it's intimidating to most people, and that’s enough for her apparently. In no time, the woman's at our table with menus.

"How are you two doing today?" she says pruriently. I've put my keys in plain sight and she's clearly pleased, "What would you like to eat?"

I push the menu to Max, "Could you get him a burger and some fries, and for myself, a five-stack of those chocolate-chip pancakes you guys got and medium-rare steak, all to go? But I want at the moment is right here." I flash the card membership Larry'd let me borrow.

She laughs forcibly, and I almost feel bad for a moment. "Oh, we haven't had one of you in a while! Of course. I can blow your mind with the chef's specials we've got out back." 

I smile graciously at the cringy pickup line. "Why, if I wasn't being careful, I would think you were being lewd." 

"Come with me," she instructs with a hand on my shoulder and I stand up. Max simply watches us leave and I toss him the keys, "Eat your food and go to the car, okay?" I barely wait for his response before she takes my hand and half-drags me out back.

The back of the bar is a trash-littered alleyway. I don't remember the place being so filthy and I realize it's been a very long time. In the less flattering backlight, it's hard for me to focus on the woman's actual face--which probably was very pretty-- but all I can see now is the shocking reality that is her face. The harsh white lighting emphasizes the cakiness of her makeup and it accentuates every pimple and crease on her face, giving her awful smile-lines and aging her dramatically. Her sweat-mixed foundation tells me I'm not her first customer today.

She's zipped down my pants and has quickly maneuvered my cock around her hands. Her long nails keep catching on the foreskin. Her heavy jewelry jangles incessantly.

"Wow daddy, didn't realize what a _package_ you had." She's trying to sweet talk a hard on but it's barely working. I'm just thinking about how disgusting this greasy gutter of a back alley is and how she smells strongly of body odor, kitchen grease, overbearing perfume, and cigarettes. I think about how Max is waiting for me in the car. I wonder if he's fine.

I focus on her beauty instead, but all I see are faults. Her eyes are the wrong shade of blue and I hate how straight her hair is. She doesn't have coppery freckles or a natural tan, nor does she have nice, dark hair, or that sweet smile that--

"Finally," she says grabbing the now erect member, laughing, "I didn't think you were the kind of guy to have trouble getting it up."

I laugh forcibly and she strokes my shaft generously until it's hard enough. She spits on it, and then speedily goes in with her mouth.

She's experienced no doubt, but her work is sloppy and desperate and it's just a fucking awful experience. I keep feeling her teeth and I hate how frantically she keeps trying to look up at me, bobbing her head and trying to blink seductively all at the same time. All I'm thinking about is Max, that he's in a huge car in a packed parking lot all by himself, and that I needed to be there soon. 

I'm wilting again, and it's obvious I'm going to take too long to orgasm, so I start yanking aggressively at my shaft while she's on it. My fist hits her mouth several times, and even though I think I've hit her hard enough to bruise, she's still dutifully at it. She attempts to smile through it all, swirling her tongue and sucking in this wild frenzy that I'm surprised I don't find _hot._ I just hate how eager she is to please. I hate how big her body is and how she's not little enough to fit right into my chest and arms, just like--

I finally cum then and she swallows every last bit. I'm actually more unsatisfied now than when I'd arrived, and I feel a headache coming on. 

"Wow Daddy. You're the biggest I've ever had." she lies, and I've heard it before.

"You did great. Thanks a lot." I say and she smiles proudly. Her makeup is all smeared again. I hand her two 500s from my wallet, and she looks as if her heart's about to stop. "If anyone ever asks about me or my kid, tell them you haven't a clue. You never saw us."

She manages to nod, face full of reverence, and I'm glad I can finally leave.

Max just watches me silently as I get into the car. He's resting his head on the large box of pancakes, looking surprisingly docile, and I'm really, truly surprised the kid hasn't tried to run off with the car or something. It wasn't a smart move, leaving him with my money and keys. I just hadn't been thinking straight, but then again, I can barely think straight now.

I take a bottle of water, open the door and wash my face with it. "Had fun?" Max asks.

"Shut up." I order.

"Did you...am I allowed to say the word _sex_ yet?" He smirks, and I have to pretend I'm annoyed this time. I feel better just speaking to him now, far better than how I'd felt being in that back alley. My headache's easing already as Max chatters about the manager who'd confused him with someone else.

This time, I'm surprised how much liked hearing him talk and laugh, just the sound of it all. He's very articulate, I notice, and his voice is easy and light. 

The windows are down and the weather is wonderful. The radio's on in the background blaring some 80s music that I used to listen to all the time, and I feel both nostalgic and at peace. _I'm not regressing,_ is what dawns on me. The real reason I stayed beside Charles after I recognized his extremity was, aside from certain death, was that I was afraid of regression. I was afraid I'd regress back to those few months I'd been left alone in that government house after Gwen and Jasper's death. It was the worst I'd ever been in my life, even worse than when I'd near overdosed after dropping out of college. I was terrified that once I'd left that safety-net of distraction, I'd spiral back out of control. 

But I was out now. And I was fine. I was beginning to think that the gang really wasn't all that I had. What I am now, is happy, and I've haven't been happy in so long.

I remind myself that I'm tall and handsome and that women used to flock to me before I'd committed myself to the raids. I used to listen to my old records and smoke my favorite jacked, double Coronas at night beside them. I'd blow my smoke in their faces of the women I liked best, and when they’d shut their eyes, I’d look them over, and it was exactly that kind of the cruel attention that would only make them all the more feverish for me. I was beginning to appreciate it all at the moment, that I could really kick back for the next couple months. That I could spend it with him. 

I'm noticing now, more than ever, how easy on the eyes he is. He's real pretty, with lots and lots of pretty curly hair and eyelashes thick enough to make him look like he's wearing eyeliner. He's not necessarily effeminate, just gentle and boyish and...helpless.

"Are you thinking about Betty?" he teases, smiling. 

"Yeah," I lie. I didn't know her name. I keep my mirror on him the rest of the way and not the traffic.

He begins to chatter again, now that'd he was sure I wasn’t mad or antsy anymore. I don’t listen to him this time, though I can tell he’s more animated and excited than before, maybe from the greasy burger, maybe from the fact that I’d finally smiled at him. He seems surer now that my intent was not to hurt him. His words just bounce off of me more or less as I admire him. 

I pick up bits and prices though. He talks about his parents, about how they were obsessed with study and reading, and I can see it's obvious product. I felt this sort of odd disconnect, hearing the name _Demir_ not referred to with a sneer or a scoff, and as the kid talks about them, I'm forced to imagine them as very real people. 

The sun had set long ago, and it’s deep in the night when Max notices me looking at him in the reflection. When I'm too embarrassed to say anything, he pauses a moment before saying, "Mister Hank--"

"Hank."

"--how did you join a gang in the first place?"

I didn't expect that. My throat goes dry and I'm not sure how to answer. I think about how wildly different my answer is now as compared several years earlier.

"Money, kiddo." I say finally, "I suppose that's all it ever was."

"You have money." he says.

I laugh and it sounds like a bark, "I haven't-- I never-- I don't. I've had days where I couldn't feed--," I run a hand through my hair to try and construct a better answer.

"I have a Chemical Engineering degree, Max. I always thought I'd end up in the pharmaceutical industry, just like my father. Like your father too, I guess. Make him proud, I suppose. But he fell into bankruptcy the year he left our family, and when he died in a car crash a few months after, drunk out of his mind, I know he wasn't thinking of me."

The car's far too quiet now but I don't want to stop. 

"I was 21, dirt poor and jobless. I didn't have anything in life to look forward to or enjoy, really. Larry, who I met in college, we fucked around with dangerous women and drugs, like the dumbass fuckers we were, and in honesty, I didn't think, nor did I want to, live past thirty. I wanted to get my masters, but my GPA dropped and I lost my scholarship, and I eventually dropped out when my mother died. I got so poor and sick I couldn't even eat half the time, but I really didn't care anymore.”

“Your father knew mines--they worked together and fell in bankruptcy together, trying to form Brusey Co. It was their dream, but a dream that never really worked out during my father's lifetime, but Frank Demir managed to fund and grow it, I guess. He contacted me years later and he offered me a job at his pharmaceutical. I rejected it and I didn't really think about Frank until much later, when I finally got a kid from all that fucking around, very literally. I wasn't ready to have a family at all, especially with a woman I didn't really know, but how could I just run away from something like that? I took your father up on his offer, a year later, and he accepted me graciously, and I still don't know why. I oversaw his drug production, covered up his illegal workings, and maintained his reputation. Your father valued me and he paid me well." _And I fucking hated him._

"You have a son." he says quietly.

"Yeah. Great kid. The only thing I was really ever proud of in my life." And I don't see Max at all at this point-- all I see is Jasper, in front of me, like a mirage. He's ten too, and he already looks like me, with hints of my mother too. And best of all, he's already a better version of me, just like I'd always wanted, "I knew I was dealing with dangerous people, and that I wasn't taking the right road down life. I told myself over and over that I'd leave it and find a way to earn more honestly, no matter how hard it'd be. I told myself that every day, but it wasn't until had my kid and wife murdered by a Kæ disgruntled with your father did I actually finally fucking leave."

"The last thing Jasper ever told me was that he didn't want to die, and I never listened. I told myself when he was an infant in my arms, that I'd be far better than my deadbeat fucker of a dad, and I never did that either."

"And--" I choke but I mask it with indifference, "I didn't even leave dishonest living after that. I went to something worse. I spent my days scouting out the man who'd killed them. I stayed in that empty government house for months because I couldn't afford anything else, and my plan at the time was to die killing him. I had no will to live, but Larry, good old Larry, he smacked some sense into me. He'd met Charles then, who was organizing the Montivellos at the time, and he coaxed me to join them. He told me how Charles was going to take down the Kæ. How he was going to get the murderer."

"And--and I liked it. I liked the gang. It gave me the exact kind of solace and distraction I needed. Under his dominion, I had to basically disappear off the blip of public existence and curb my drug addiction, which was perfect for me because no one was waiting for me. I told myself I'd only be there a year, until my grief stopped being fatal, but one year turned to two, and two turned to three, and I ended up spending over a decade rising ranks. All I wanted was a sense of purpose and accomplishment, and when I saw those dirty fucking gangs go down one by one, I was filled with wonder because it was all _me._ I was good at something for once, very good. I was good, because I wasn't afraid to die or kill." 

The kid is just staring at me, his eyes open like they'd never been before. _Until you_ , I think. 

"And I realized, far too late in, when I killed an infant and her mother on a mission, just for _being_ there, that we weren't killing the violent opposition. We were _replacing_ them. Because it was all about money in the end." I laugh bitterly, "And in the end, I never even found the guy who slit my family’s throats."

The silence that followed was traumatic. My head hurts again and my face is hot. I hate the kid right now for having made me ramble, for having me spill more than he'd asked for. I hate that I've spoken enough for him to see right through me, especially when the boy already has the audacity to assume he understands me. 

I suspect at that moment, the reason I liked Max so much wasn't because he reminded me of Jasper. It wasn't pure goodwill or his resemblance that was driving me right now, but guilt. It was as if I was saving this kid in an attempt to redeem myself. This undeserving kid.

I hate him. I hate Max for being a poor excuse for Jasper. I hate him for having the audacity to be sitting here in Jasper's spot like he was his replacement.

Max looks like he wants to say something, but decides otherwise.

I'm on the verge of making a rash decision when, thankfully, the county’s multi-story car garage looms ahead. But as we get closer, I notice that all the lights are off and the main office's door is locked. A sign taped to the glass clarifies that the office opens at 6 am. I sigh irately.

Resting against the curb, I light a cigarette, exhaling and watching the smoke dissipate in the cold dawn air. The tar fills my lungs and it's such a liberating and cancerous thing. Max sits down beside me, breathing in the second-hand smoke. I go through the entire Camel pack, lighting the next cigarette with the stub of the last one, and my throat burns by the end. It's such a divine feeling. I note disjointedly how the kid didn't cough even once in all the smoke.

The stars are so bright in this rural town. I can't count the number of times I've seen the transition from day to night, and night to dawn, and dawn to day. I want to follow the line that splits it and dissolve in its space.

The city lights illuminate the horizon in what feels like a mockery of dawn, and I'm really not sure what time it is at all. "It's been night for a very long time," says Max, voicing my thoughts. I wondered if the sun would ever rise. 

"Hank?" he asks a little later, and he sounds a little scared, and for some reason, I know what he's about to say before he even opens his mouth, "Do I remind you of Jasper?"

I assess him for a moment, then blow my smoke in his face. As he shuts his eyes, I look him up and over, then shrug when he opens his eyes again, "No. You're nothing like him. I'm glad you're not my son. I like you for you Max, and that's far better."

\----------------------

When the office finally opens, I collect a pair of keys from the front desk for yet another vehicle and park the Cadillac on the second story. It's meticulous, but I explain to Max how it's necessary so that we can't be tracked down to our house by car, at least not directly. 

I know the man at the desk recognizes me; there weren’t that many people who lived in Mange Forest, and there’s pity, almost disappointment, in his eyes as he assesses my bruises and haggard appearance. He knew me when I moved out here ten years ago, just a year after the deaths, right after I quit Brusey. The beaten looking kid holding my arm obviously wasn’t mines either. As he methodically hands me my keys, I feel rage.

We climb to the floor above and collect my beloved and dusty ATV. It's the first vehicle I owned in college, with countless miles in it from spontaneous camping and off-roading sessions. Carlsbad used to be a haven to me. Looking at how old both of my once prized vehicles had become reminded me that I wasn’t young anymore and that I’d put what could've been a relatively successful future unnecessarily in jeopardy. The more I thought about it all, the more I was beginning to regret the money, time, and risk I was taking. This kid wasn’t Jasper. He was like the thousands of other kids the Montivellos had killed. All I wanted to do now was return to the safety net of my lab.

When Max tries to take my hand again, I shake him off.

Before we move on, I take out my talkie and try and dial Larry up first, but the signal won't go through. The dial connection's a little fuzzy, but we were in a garage after all, so I decide to check later, once I got to the cabin.

The logical move would be to have Max sit behind me while I drove, but there was no way he would be able to wrap his arms around me so I'm forced to carry him for the millionth time. I remind myself, societally, it's probably unacceptable to carry a kid in the double digits, but Max is barely taller than a standing guitar and he doesn't _look_ ten, so I'm forced to hold him regardless. He wraps his arms around my neck and rests his head on my shoulder. He seems content enough.

The ATV drives pretty smoothly, despite having been abandoned for the better part of a year and I'm comfortable enough on it to drive it practically free handedly. One of my hands occasionally reorients the steering while my other hand makes sure the human being on my left doesn't go flying off.

The ride jerks and I immediately dart a hand to his back and my knuckles drive into the knobs of his spine, even through the sweatshirt. He's all undeveloped muscle and tendons and soft tissue and my hands catch every hollow junction in his back as I reorient him. I make a note to feed him more for the next couple months. He breathes rhythmically like he’s fallen asleep. 

The AMV jumps erratically over the dangerously uneven dirt path. To my horror, I notice my pants feel tighter and _no no no--_

I wasn't fucking restless before, I was--

 _I'm going to hell_ , I think to myself.

A few more minutes pass and I see the house loom ahead and I definitely have a raging hard-on and really, it's the AMV's vibrations fault, and I fucking despise myself. I desperately try to mentally will it down. 

I stop the vehicle and park it sloppily beside the stable. Apparently, Max hadn't fallen asleep at all, so I stop fucking running my hands all over him and put him down.

I take my time getting off, folding my jacket and taking out the keys, hoping he'd get curious enough to walk the front steps without me, but of course he doesn't. I'm fucking humiliated when he notices my pants. He eyes the bulge briefly, then looks away. 

"I'm fucking starving." I say loudly, to divert his attention away, "I hope we have food."

We didn't have food, of course, since the place had been abandoned for over a year. I find some dry macaroni shells, boil it for far too long, then slather it in a poor excuse for tomato sauce.

Max eats the food politely, then excuses himself. I notice he's trying to keep a distance between us and I'm glad he does. I think he notices my change in attitude.

"Don't turn on the TV okay?" I say call down to him, "You don't need that kind of negativity. And keep it quiet. I'm going to make a phone call."

I punch in the area code and the password again and wait for the signal to pass, but the connection's completely dead now and I grow numb. I don't even hear static anymore. That only happens if the connection's been purposefully cut from the head office. Boss Charles' office.

I'm jabbing numbers and buttons rapidly, punching in every combination, every emergency number sequence that I know. I'm knocking stuff over, fumbling with my drawers, trying to open the battery case and replace them, hoping, begging, that, it was just the batteries, please let it just be the batteries. 

_Oh no, no, no--_

There's still no connection, but now I notice a new message alert in the icon. 

**Larrys dead fucker and so r you**

I dry swallow. I reread it until the words all blur together and I think I'm going to vomit. I'm trying to breathe, I'm trying to say something, and then suddenly I'm screaming nonsensically into the receiver, _"LARRY! YOU FUCKIN SON OF A BITCH! NO, NO! LARRY! LARRY!"_

I've hurled the talkie at the wall before I had even registered I'd done it and it splinters irreparably. _They're probably tracking me down now. They knew where I was._

I'd thrown it all away for some kid who didn't even matter. Every victory that I'd worked for, every victory that I'd bled for-- gone. Boss Charles is after my life now. I'm on the hit list of one do the biggest gangs in the country. My gang. And Larry. God, they killed poor Larry. 

I know I can't hide more than a month until they find me. They knew everything.

My head is spinning and I can't think straight. My mouth is dry and my hands are shaking and sweaty. I think I see double. The kid. Max. Max.

I palm the knife in my hand and consider mercy killing him. I have to get rid of him now. My pants are tight and I want to murder the ungrateful kid.

I find myself stumbling down the hallway, in front of his room, and I slam open the door.

He's crumpled on the bed, shaking violently. The TV is on a news station reporting details on the attack on the building, an attack that was just a week ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. The channel reports on how the chief of police still had "no leads", just like we bribed him to say, and the report simply lists the victims again with some heroic background music. I notice, this time, however, that there's a new couple they pair together--an Indian woman, a woman who was easily one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, with very dark skin, hair, and eyes, who they paired with a strongly-built, curly blonde, lily-white man with blue-green eyes. 

His parents were definitely dead.

What I deduce from the police commentary is that they suspected Max was dead too, and that they weren't searching for him too actively. Max has deduced this too, as I can see from his lack of composure. 

I grab him by his shoulders, roughly turning him around, and he cries, "I never knew anything about any of the gangs! I've never even heard of the Kæ. Nor did my parents. I swear, I would've told you. You guys took us for the wrong reasons. I swear I don't know anything."

"I don't fucking care about the case," I spit, grabbing both of his wrists and double knotting them together with the cotton handkerchief from my pocket, pulling the knot tight enough to make him wince.

He's confused, but I see the panic manifest in his eyes once he meets mines. He leaps to his feet and darts for the door, but I snag him by the waist and throw him on the bed.

I'm on him before he can get up, pinning his body with mines. I lean to pull off his sweatshirt and he tries to spit at me but I smack him before he can. I rip the sweatshirt off and go for his shirt. The little, pastel-yellow camp shirt that makes him look like a fucking angel. I'm unbuttoning his little cargo shorts. He tries to use his teeth to maneuver off the handkerchief, then gives up and starts punching me the best he can, crying obscenities, and I smack him harder to shut him up. 

Blood trickles from his nose.

I loop off my belt and throw it aside, then reach into my pants and unseath Jay's hunting knife. He stills upon seeing it, eyes as wide as possible. I wonder if he's having flashbacks of that night. I wonder if he believed I'd kill him. I grab his shirt the moment he hesitates, and in one move, cut it in half from the front. 

"No, no, no--"

I cup a hand around the dark, hand-shaped bruise around his throat and push threateningly. He chokes like an infant, "One squeeze and it's over, little cunt. Shut the fuck up and this doesn't have to hurt as much."

"You were supposed to protect me!" He screams loud enough to hurt my ears, and it stops me.

I drop my hands. I'm trying to breathe, trying to think straight. I was taking my rage out on this poor kid. It wasn't his fault at all.

The terrifying fact that Charles is after me seems to dissipate the moment I take in the horrifying reality that there's a tied, four-foot child straddled under me, with fresh blood smeared across his nose and face, and that I was trying to rape him in my rage. I scramble off of him, instantly. I take one step back off the bed, away from him, and he takes that chance to bolt, bolt straight out the door and I don't stop him.

I twitch in shock. _I’m a rapist, I’m a rapist, I’m a rapist._

I slump down on the bed, clasping my hands together, trying to stop them from their violent shaking. _This has all gone to shit so fast._ I inhale deeply. I need to organize, think of a new plan. But first, what I had to do was come to grips with the scary pattern I was setting. 

Once I started liking the kid, I started objectifying him, treating him mean and preying on him. Platonism and goodwill were concepts I didn't understand. Concepts I stopped exercising after Jasper and Gwen died.

_I've been taught to hurt the things I like and I’m surprised I liked you._

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, collecting my thoughts, and for the first time in years I'm forced to face them.

_My father wouldn't have sex with my mother. He'd rape her, and as a kid for the longest time, I thought rape was what sex was. When I confronted my mother about it, she told me that love is best when it hurts. When I confronted my father about it, he told me the only way to keep anything you ever liked was to treat them mean, to keep them keen._

_From then on, I acutely noticed that the crueler I was to my teachers and counselors, the more attention they gave me. I noticed that the nastier and more dismissive I was to people, the more they wanted to please me, and the more they came back to me. I noticed that the more I abandoned or cheated on my women, the more they wanted me._

The sun had set long ago and it's dark outside now. The pit in my stomach eases once I realize that I never did hear the front door open.

_I liked the things that hurt me back, too, like equally violent women, deadly drugs, and murderous brawls. And maybe that's why I liked Charles's gang so much. And while I never raped or abused anybody, ever, I recognized that my father's method was effective, if not right._

I exhale harshly in relief when I hear a door close somewhere in the house.

_I learned to associate my love with violence and that's why I loved to submit to my rage._

I get up and venture down towards the only other room in the cabin. It's locked, but I know the house well enough to shift the knob to the left and jiggle it until the lock slid out of place.

He lies there, on the small bed in a dark room, the product of my malfunctions. He's there for me to exploit like everything else I've ever loved and I want to explain to him that I won't. I want him to understand everything, why I do what I do.

_I'd been taught to be like a man of steel who felt no pain. They broke the boy inside of me and I let it poison me._

I will never hurt you again.

_I think my father hurt the things he liked to prevent himself from ever loving it, so that it wouldn't hurt him when it left, and I learned to do the same. And it was effective. Violence and sex objectified what I loved. It turned loving something into controlling it. And I knew in the end, when my father died and I didn't cry because I never loved him, that he was right._

I will never hurt you again.

_And I never hurt Jasper either, and maybe it was my fault it all hurt so bad now._

But when I open the door further, to explain myself to him, I decide the kid’s not obligated to understand anything. That wasn't his responsibility. That was mines.

"I've been taught to hurt the things I like," I say, and that's all I say because that's all I'm able to word. I turn on the light and sit on the bed of the bed, "But I will never hurt you again."

He doesn't move away this time when I slide my hands under his arms and pull him into my chest. I run my fingers through his thick hair and over his boney back, squeezing his arms to still him. His fists are bloodless under the deathly tight handkerchief. He never managed to get it off. I untie it and try to rub the color back.

"I'm sorry." I say and it's the only sound in the room beside his breathing. I never apologized to anyone, not even Boss Charles, but the apology slips out now and I want to apologize again and again for the rest of my life.

The pale moonlight filters in through the window, bleaching the walls and etching long blue shadows across the carpet floor. I think I can lay here all night, open and exposed, thinking about all the people I've hurt through my infantilized view on love, and how I never felt like shit about it until this kid.

"Larry's dead." I tell him, as if he understands.

It had to have been hours later when he finally speaks, voice raw and hoarse, "I have nowhere to go."

 _They're dead,_ is unspoken in the air.

"I can take you to international borders." I say finally. The hours sitting gave me time to think. "The gang is after us. We don't have the option to wait here for months anymore. I have to get you out of here. Now."

"Get out to where?"

"I--I have family. In Cuba. In Belize. People I trust more than I trust myself. You will be safe there. Far safer than you would be here. And once you're 18, you're home free, kiddo. It might kill us getting there, but... we don't have a choice."

He doesn't respond and I get he's probably overwhelmed. I want to give him all the time in the world he needs to make up his mind. I think I can lay down here forever waiting. But I can't.

"We have to get out of here." I say, eventually, and it hurts, "They know where we are. At least, they know the area. The AMV saved us."

I push him aside so I can get up to change my clothes. He turns to face me, the shredded yellow shirt hanging loosely. He crosses his arms over his small chest, and my God, he's so little, it hurts.

"I have to get you a new shirt," I say, "And new clothes in general. Maybe get our hair cut so we're unrecognizable. We'll have to hide, go incognito a while."

"When are we leaving?" He asks.

"Now." 

I grab my wallet and gun holster and begin to lock the windows. He makes what he can with his torn shorts and wears the sweatshirt over nothing. Unlocking the safe in my closet, I grab some of the fake legal identifications I had from previous missions and pack most of the life savings I had in cash. There had to be near a half-million in my suitcase by the time I was done. There isn't room to take all the cash though, and once I'm done, I don't bother locking the safe back up again.

I can't believe I'm doing this all again.

I take his arm, pretending not to notice when he flinches, and assess the physical state of him. The bruising and scarring on his arms and neck and would get me stopped near instantly. 

"I've got to get you some long-sleeved shirts and pants."

"What about my face?" he asks quietly, fingers tracing the facial scars. The purple bruising around his temples makes the blue-green of his eyes look surreal. 

"I've got some foundation we can use."

I reach into the bathroom medicine cabinet and take out an old liquid makeup container. I pat the solution on the scars with my thumb and frown at how unnaturally white it comes on the tan of his skin.

I look up to see him studying me. His lips part like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it and shakes his head. 

"Gwen--my wife used to wear it." I explain. "When we would go out. She was lighter than you obviously." 

He doesn't reply.

I feel this sort of deep inconsolable sadness as I cover the bruise I gave him.

I take my time, and in the end, while the patchiness and discoloration was rather ugly, it wasn't anything too wild. Anybody who didn't know him probably wouldn't question it too much. 

"Lets go." I say. 

The bag on my back feels too heavy. When I store it in the back of my AMV, it doesn't feel right.

"Are we leaving permanently?" he asks. He looks back apprehensively at the house, lit dimly by a rising sun.

"We might come back," I say. "One day. But not soon. But when we do, everything'll be better then. I promise."

The drive back to the garage feels much shorter this time. It's only been a day since we've come. We go to the front desk to collect the keys and meet the same pitiful eyes that miss no detail, eyes that spot the kid’s torn clothing and fresh bruising, but eyes that we ignore as we pile into the car. 

We're on the road again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so fucking hard to write. He's unforgivable and he needs to die


	5. 'Iinaa Aman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When was this ever about what you wanted?
> 
> also awks continuation, consider the last chap and this as one whole chapter pls, and also, thanks so much ao3 u piece of ass

"Where are we going now?" He asks finally. There's a morning mist as the sun rises and the sky is a dangerous napalm orange. I get the strongest sense of Deja Vu.

I can't believe we're doing this again.

"Florida," I say and his face is just as disturbed as last time. I laugh in response, even though it's the last thing I want to do. "I've got a friend in Miami who can hit us up with a boat to Cuba. It's a 24-hour drive to his place."

Max doesn't talk for the rest of the ride. He stays still mostly, and he'll occasionally look over at me while I pretend not to notice. The kid's hard to look at. In the purple-tinted dome lights, his freckles and eyes seem to glow. When I finally do turn to meet his gaze, he'll jerk away, and I realize sometime later, that he was _afraid_ of me.

I wish I was lucid enough to explain myself to him, but I think even my explanation is a poor excuse. Max never had any sex appeal for me. I was disgusting and sick, but I wasn't attracted to fucking _kids_. The issue was that it hurt to look at him, because I see fucking Frank Demir in his features, and sometimes I'm delusional enough to see Jasper too, and as I sought to control and destroy those feelings, I sought to control and destroy him too.

Sex controls people. Violence controls people. Fear controls people.

For my women, my neuroticism worked great. They responded to my aggression with even stronger aggression, and like in a game of tennis, they shot back equally hard, reeling me in and grounding me. They were capable women who understood my anger and maybe they just let me get away with it because I'd grown spoiled.

And it was stupidly easy to forget Max was not a woman but a kid, because when was the last time I had a platonic relationship with anybody at all? And so, when I attempted to break him, he crumbled instantly, and that was terrifying enough to stop me instantly.

But I don't tell him that.

It's near sunset again when the "WELCOME TO TEXAS" sign looms ahead. _There's a Shö base here too,_ I remember, and I realize then, that Gavin's offer still stood. He could guarantee security for the both of us and get me a job back in his gang, and Max would really just end up with people he didn't know either way. I didn't think Max'd be too pleased, but maybe, I didn't need to tell him at all.

It's night now and the wide highway is eerily empty. It's surrounded by dense forestry, but the road is elevated enough to show glimpses of a muted neon city beyond. Max's eyes, the road, the buildings---they're all a toxic blue. It's all seems dissociative and dreamlike enough to snap me back to reality and drive the thought of Gavin to the back of my mind.

I knew I should take a stop soon, grab some food, maybe get the kid some not-torn clothing, but I didn't for the life of me want to spend another night on the road, so I decide on an all-nighter and pull into the nearest exit for some caffeine.

We're in the metropolitan area of Dallas, the real city, and Max surprisingly has his face pushed up against the window, fixated on all the lights. I resist the urge to smirk. _How often was this high profile kid actually allowed on the streets of New York?_

Against my better judgment, I slow near a department store complex surrounding a decorated public square. Even though it's midnight, there's a sort of festival going on, complete with live music, food vendors, and brightly lit bars. The kid is practically standing up in his seat looking. 

"Wanna take a break?" I ask, and Max tears his eyes away from the window, "Let's check out the place, get our shopping done." 

The mall is enormous and far too upscale for my liking, with it's with marble floors, fountains, and chandeliers. We pass a glamorized toy store with its huge plush dolls set up against the glass and I wondered if Max slept with stuffed animals. Do ten-year-olds play with toys?

Once we've reached the clothing section, I scour the aisles for pieces that would rid of any physical features that would make Max and I immediately identifiable to authorities or stray Montivellos. From the men's section, I grab a pair of generic boots and bulky jackets that masks my muscle for fat, covers my tattoos, and makes me look embarrassingly uncle-like. I miss my biker vests already.

Deciding to drop an age group to dress Max's petiteness, I take advantage of his prepubescent androgyny to grab him an array of T-shirts and shorts in unisex styles and colors. He's less than pleased with the overall shorts I've grabbed for him, an accidentally adorable piece that de-ages him further and streamlines a distinct body shape. With all his hair, he almost looks like a little girl from a distance. I grab him a pair of conventional black sneakers and he likes a pair of yellow rain-boots with tiny rainbows on the arches and he wears them with the overalls and his old Nike knee socks. 

If there's a description out there on a skinny, 10-year old boy, they won't find him.

It's much colder outside now in the AM hours of the night and the festival's calmed down significantly. The bright Christmas lights and neon signs casts everything around us in an array of oranges and reds, and I'm surprised to see fireworks start over the treetops and hear people screaming in the distance. 

_It's the Fourth of July,_ I realize. 

I pause for a minute to take a smoke, realizing that we wouldn't get a chance to stop again anytime soon. Even though Max's right beside me, he doesn't cough, and this time I'm blunt enough ask: "Did your father smoke around you too?" because I didn't remember Frank Demir having a smoking problem.

He waves the smoke out of his face, "His clients used to. The blowing smoke in my face that is. They'd do stuff like that all the time, swatting, yanking, pulling my hair, and my father couldn't do anything about it."

Charles and I would do that to the wives of our prospective investors. It was meant to relay disrespect. It was meant to intimidate. I crush my clip.

"I hated Gavin X the most," he continues, and I'm surprised Max knows him, let alone has actually met him. _I'd_ never even met him. "He'd buy me all this stuff whenever he came, but he was the worst. I hated him so much."

Now probably wasn't the time for me to admit I was considering his invitation. What bothered me most, however, was the fact that Gavin was the kind of man who shouldn't be allowed near kids. Everyone knew that, "What were you even doing around executive heads?" 

"It was a show of discipline. Dad was proud the more I could bear."

The guilt's strong enough to make me feel a little sick, but I mask it over with indifference. I tell him to stay put while I made a phone call to Hester, the friend in Florida who worked in the boat services. I could call the man later too, but right now, I didn't want to look at him. 

The thing I appreciated most about Hester was that he didn't ask too many questions. He laughs at my sarcasm and barely skips a beat when I tell him I'd be in Florida in two days. He simply advises I visit this sketchy place in Houston to buy some fake identities to get us overseas and then gives me the address to a Tampa warehouse where he'd leave me a boat license to access the docks. I thank him gratefully and hang up. 

I've set Max aside for no more than two minutes, but when I turn around, I see a dark-skinned, Eastern-European-looking man speaking to him. I freeze. The middle-aged man is talking gently to him in a throaty foreign language I don't recognize and Max is speaking back. He's talking in...Arabic? I'm trying to remember where his mother was from. Turkey? India? 

Max gives a simple reply to whatever the man's saying, and apparently the answer is satisfactory because he gives his parting with a _salam_ and walks away.

Keeping an eye on the man, I make my way back to Max and take his hand, whispering lowly to him, "What did he want?" 

"He asked me if I was okay. He asked where my parents were." Max's face paint has rubbed off considerably and I'm irked I hadn't noticed earlier, "I told him I was fine."

"What does ina...aram mean?"

 _"'Iinaa 'aman_." He rectifies, "I told him I'm safe. I told him I'm safe with you, and he let me go."

There's a pit in my stomach. "Let's get our hair cut while we're here."

It's only in the heart of Dallas city, I think, that someone can get their hair cut in the early hours of the morning. If the barber thinks Max and I as an odd pair, he doesn't express it. 

I've had the same burly look for the last couple years: shaggy hair with sideburns that connect to a thick beard, so I ask the barber to trim my hair all the way down to a buzz cut and shave the beard off entirely. I've always hated buzzcuts, so it's no surprise I hate it even more once it's on myself, but it's refigured my head shape dramatically, so I can't complain. But once he gets to the beard, I'm having second thoughts. The barber's less than half-way through and I already look like my college-self, back when I didn't like beards. I used to think they made me look too old and too intimidating, but for the last decade, that was the only look I'd wanted. My chin feels embarrassingly naked and I want to tell the barber to stop. But I suppress my childishness and let him finish.

He leaves a light shadow and I feel hideous in the final product. There are actual tan lines across my jaw and forehead where the hair would hang. I'm unrecognizable even to myself. In the lame jacket and bare face, I look like an alternate reality. A bad one. I let myself submit to the misery for a moment before swallowing it back down.

Max is unrecognizable too. A statement fade has the sides trimmed neatly to the skin and a thick collection of floppy curls falls in his face. He looks effeminate and even more racially ambiguous than ever. 

Slipping the barber two 500s, I tell him the same line-- _you never saw us_. I'm sloppy now covering our tracks, but we'd be out of the state soon. 

We take a tour bus through the enormous plaza back to our parking. I pick Max up and seat him beside me and he's looking at me peculiarly. He rubs the back of his hand against the stubble of what was left of my beard and frowns, then tells me he doesn't like it. I laugh loud enough to make people turn around.

We ditch our old clothing in the dump behind the parking’s office, collect the car, and then we're on the highway again. 

"We have only one more place to stop at," I say, plugging in the address.

The first thing I notice right after we merge onto the highway is an enormous tract of land to our left that was boarded off. A large, colorful billboard behind the fence advertises that an amusement park would be built. It also featured a picture of a neon Ferris wheel, with the caption, _Will reach a whopping 500 feet!!_

"Huh," I say, straining to look at the signs entirety as we pass, "I've didn't know Ferris wheels could get that big."

"I've never been to an amusement park before." Max says softly, turning around to watch it disappear.

"We should change that." I say. “One day.”

A few hours later, parked in front of an isolated warehouse, I double check the address Hester had given me before entering the building, even though I'd been here before, three times in fact, over my turbulent term with Charles and the authorities. If you ask for the manager, you'll discover that behind the facade of a printer company was an identity theft scam. If you ever needed a fake identity or a temporary identity change, this was the place.

If they know Charles is after me, they don't let on. They take a picture of Max and me, and within the third hour, they've finalized it. I shake hands with the manager and he looks at me a little curiously, but there's no need to hide anymore. We'd be out of here in no time. 

In the car, I hand Max the freshly printed paperwork and ID to look over, "You're Gabriel now." I say. "Gabriel Martin. He used to be a kid in Arizona who died running away. Guess he's still running away," I note morbidly, patting his head.

"Gabriel." He repeats like he's trying to internalize it.

"You won't be legally recognized by this name unless we submit the application with the social security administration but obviously we can't do that."

"What's yours?" He asks.

"Mark. Mark Dwight."

"So we don't have the same last names?" He asks.

"I wouldn't do that to you," I say, hypocritically, as if I'm some beam of morality for him.

"I would've liked that," he says decidedly and I'm surprised how much that hurts. He misunderstands my silence, "I didn't mean it like that. I'm not trying to replace or disrespect your previous family. I was just talking out loud--I never had a family like this, but if it's anything like what you've done for me Hank, then I like it. A lot."

I blink back the unexpected moisture in my eyes and pretend like I'm squinting against the sun as I back out the parking lot. If Max notices, he doesn't say a word. I'm surprised my tears are happy ones.

_When I used to think of love, I would think of manipulative older men and naive little girls and I'd decided early on in life that love just wasn't for me._

I take a quick stop at a CVS and buy a needle, disinfectant and cotton balls. The woman at the counter looks disappointed while scanning the items, as if the equipment combined with my haggard appearance made her conclude I was ready to take some drugs behind the building. It's not a far-fetched assumption.

In the back parking lot, I reach into my duffel to take out a marked syringe and bend down to use the car's wing mirror to align the needle to the back of my neck, right where my spine juts out. 

"What's that?"

"A microchip."

The syringe slides right under my skin, in that space between muscle and spine. Then, with a click, I inject the microchip into the vein wall. The implant sends shivers down my spine, but the sensation passes and I speak again.

"Me and a couple guys I managed to snatch these when we were staking out Cali. They're tracker bugs that the LAPD and the FBI can track, but they only turn on once the host's body's heart stops. And of course, I stole one."

"Why do you want the police to--"

I straighten and take out a thickly-incised Bowie hunting knife, sealed in safety plastic, and he stops talking immediately. I can't see his eyes while standing up; heavy lashes follow the weapon's movement until I hand it to him. All I see is green when he finally looks up at me.

"The knife is for self-defense. And if I die on you ever, in Cuba or even on the way now—," I tap the back of my neck, "—the cops will be alerted immediately. You'll never be left alone."

I don't think he can speak.

_But when I'm with him, I think of optimistic futures and goodwill and family, and I think that, if that's what love really is, it might be for me after all._

We keep driving until I see the entrance sign for Tallahassee and I decide to take a break and stop at a little cafe. I get Max some overpriced sugar-free pound cake, and for myself, an expresso and a lime Monster. We sit outside in the summer heat, watching a pink and orange sunset. He tells me he's never watched sunsets as much in his life as he has in the last two weeks. Neither have I.

We drive to a motel after, and I tell him on the way in, in what's meant to be a reassuring gesture, "This might be our last night in the states", but I wasn't really sure how I felt about that myself.

There's a large fire pit on the back patio, adjacent to the pool, and there are people toasting marshmallows by it. A caterer douses the weakening flame in gasoline, and as he does, I empty my pockets of my cigars and lighters and throw it all in. I watch the flame triple in size and I take a deep breath of the tar and smoke.

I'll never smoke in front of him again.

We're the last people watching the fire, even after it weakens and eventually dies out.

The room is what I expected of it, rundown and old, but the beds are soft enough to swallow you up completely, and the first thing Max does is hit the shower, unnecessarily grateful about all the soap they've provided us. An extra hundred can do a lot, I suppose. I don't bother to turn on the lights-- the only source of illumination is the small reading lamp by the bedside, and even though I'm sleepy, I decide to wait for him to come out first.

Absentmindedly, I sharpen my dagger on a chunk of white oak I keep hanging from my keychain. Whittling often calmed my nerves, and as I cut along the grain, following the dark streaks that run down the wood, I think hard about what leaving the states meant. It meant I couldn't take Gavin up on his offer. I think about how, instead of being kept in the fringes of a society in a country he's completely unfamiliar with, Max would probably be safer and happier in Gavin's custody, with his infinite money and connections.

But I know, deep down, that's not true.

When I hear the water stop in the bathroom, I curve out to finish the cut so that the wood doesn't rip, and then settle with one of the books by the bedside.

When Max opens the door, the cold room is flooded with steam and the smell of baby soap, and he wraps his arms around himself and squints in the dark. He's in black soccer shorts and baby-blue Nike high socks and his dark-orange T-shirt says **Boom Boom Beat It.** I'm not completely sure what that means. I don’t even remember buying it. 

__I'd specifically requested two beds, but he joins me on mines. His black, damp hair spreads over the mattress and his face is flushed from the heat of the bath._ _

__"What was Jasper like?" He asks, just as I'm about to turn off the light. I slide a pillow between us so that he has his own space._ _

__"Aren't you full of energy?" I say, sardonically, yawning obnoxiously before patting his cheek, "It's been awhile since we've actually slept properly on a bed. You should go to sleep."_ _

__"I had a bit of your Monster when you went to the bathroom so I'm fine. It tasted awful by the way."_ _

__I chuckle loudly, emptily, because I love him but I hate his question and when I reply, "I really never knew him, Max." I'm admitting my shame both to him and to myself. "Sometimes, I don't even remember exactly what he looks like, and it's the most terrifying feeling in the world."_ _

__"Did you love anything about him besides the fact that he was your son?" he says straightforwardly enough for me to realize that I'd probably let this kid get away with anything._ _

"That." I reply carefully, "And the concept that--that he was literally me as kid...helpless and fully dependent on two, troubled, hateful people. I finally had the chance to kind of rewrite my own childhood, I guess, by giving him everything my parents couldn't. The only thing he had in the world was me and that made me feel so flattered and obligated to help him—," and I bite the _just like you, Max_ that almost follows after. 

__I might've been transparent with sleep, but I was still cognizant enough to stop myself from something honest enough to make him go clammy or distant._ _

__Max doesn't look appalled though. He looks thoughtful, "I wish Hank, that after your family passed away, that you never left the pharmaceutical, but got the medication you needed from them to treat your depression and grief. I wish you stayed to rid Brusey of all its gangs and corruption instead of adding to it. I wish you remarried and got a new family. I wish you stayed long enough to meet me then. I wish you took me away from my nannies and all those executives to teach me all the stuff you're teaching me now."_ _

__And he looks like he's blurted it all out too. At that moment, I think he’s the most beautiful kid in the world._ _

__What I want to tell him, however, was that even if I worked at the company and got a family, the truth would be that I would've never been allowed to, or even be interested in meeting him, and the wonderful alternative life he's provided me with seems empty without that, but I decide not to say it._ _

__"I--I never kept any pictures of him," I continue, though it's past midnight and we both really need sleep. I just feel this need to confess it all at once, like sin. "I had to leave all of his and Gwen's stuff behind when I had to ditch that house and disappear off the blip of public existence for Charles. Like, I'll remember that he was 4 foot 7 and a half exactly, and that he had gun-metal eyes and that he was left-handed like my mother, and that he had dirty blonde hair with bangs exactly this long, but sometimes I can't remember how exactly he wore his features. Like, just the other day I couldn't remember if he had freckles or not. Sometimes, my biggest fear is that I'll forget exactly what he looks like. That'll I'll forget the little things I remember now. It's so fucking awful. And my biggest wish, honestly, my biggest wish is to see Jasper before I die. Like, I want to see him as like a last image or a mirage as I'm dying as an old man or something."_ _

__Max laughs gently and says, "Me too," because it's all so absurd and morbid, but the thing is he understands me, the best a kid can, and he accepts it all as a part of me, and I'm in love with the sound of his laugh affirming it._ _

__He traces the tattoo around my elbow. The Japanese one is his favorite, he's told me._ _

__"I used to be scared my father never really wanted me around.” He says, “That I was nothing more than a showpiece to him, really, a future heir." He admits. His warm breath fans my arm. "But I loved him so much. And the weird thing is, I'm happy now. Even though I think I'm going to die at any moment. I'm not afraid, I think. Is that weird?"_ _

__"No." I say. The room's not cold anymore and it's all a lot nicer now._ _

__He's still tracing my tattoo and I gently move his arm away, "Sleep," I command, and the effect is ruined by the slight slur in my voice, "We have to drive all day tomorrow, too."_ _

__"I'm not sleepy."_ _

__I'm too fatigued to move his arm when it returns to trace my other tattoo, as if I'm a coloring book or something, and I really just wish the kid would go to sleep, and suddenly, I remember something funny enough to get me laughing hard enough to shake the bed._ _

__His arm moves quickly enough this time, "Are you okay?" He asks bewilderedly._ _

__I feel like a lunatic. The joke wouldn't seem funny to anyone but myself, but I tell him anyways, how I used to never be able to sleep without a handful of Xanax, especially when I was stressed. "But I'm sleepy as hell now when you're not," I tell him, "Even though technically, I should be more stressed than ever."_ _

__He rolls his eyes and says a little sarcastically, "I guess running away from the government exhausts you out, huh."_ _

__I pull the blanket up to trap his wandering arm before I turn off the light, "l suppose," I say, though what I've really noticed is that I haven't been stressed at all for the time I've been with him._ _

__I told myself before clocking out, that I'd wake up in a few hours, right at dawn, to go refill the car's gas tank and get us a hearty breakfast so the kid can actually get a few extra hours of sleep, but when I eventually wake it's unbelievably bright outside and when I check the clock it's fucking one in the afternoon._ _

__I groan loudly, not realizing the kid's right under my arm, and I almost throw him off the bed. He dodges my arm and comments not-too-kindly on my bed hair. What a little shit._ _

__There's food on the nightstand too, four jelly donuts and a half-eaten croissant. "It's for you," he explains, making grabby hands for the croissant as I take the plate, "You missed the continental." He's put a blanket on me, too, and the domesticity hurts._ _

__He was everything I lacked._ _

__I busy myself with the donuts so I don't have to speak, and Max lets me, sitting by the base of the bed, fiddling with the room key, waiting._ _

__I wonder if this is how life is supposed to be. I wonder if this is how it's going to be, in Belize, with all of my extended family in one large house, doting this wonderful kid, filling the halls with music and conversation and the scent of delicious food, like how it used to be when I was little._ _

__I pull him back into the bed once I'm done, earning a surprised yelp. There was no rush in leaving the room anymore since I had to pay for an extra day anyways now. I run my hand through his hair and I never want to get up. I love Max like a father, I realize. I want to do for him what I failed to do for Jasper. I want a chance to rewrite our childhoods again._ _

__His hair comes out in my hands._ _


	6. Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is violent as fuck and this is your only warning

We reach the warehouse in Tampa quickly after that. We're only a few more hours away from Miami--a few more hours from our freedom. When I get out to double check the address, I'm shocked at how worn down and dirty my car had become. But really considering the near thousand miles I've jammed into it after months of inactivity made it all the more impressive that it hadn't sputtered on me once yet.

"We're here," I say to him, popping my head back in to take out the keys. As I grab the ID documents from the compartment, I notice the Gavin's red invitation below it.

 _It isn't too late still_ , I think, and that bothers me.

Max notices the invitation too, this time, and he takes it from the pile before I can. I notice him zero in on Gavin's signature before looking at me. "You know Gavin." he says, in more of a statement than a question.

"I'm surprised you do." I say, folding the rest of the documents back into the compartment and fishing a key out before shutting it.

"Is he asking you to help him with something?"

I shrug, "That's not important right now. Come on. Or you can stay in the car instead."

He doesn't like that, of course. He shoots another glance at the letter before folding it back up and handing it to me to pocket.

When I reach for his hand, he doesn't take it, and I pretend not to notice.

It's an abandoned sawmill factory, surrounded by layers of barbed wire and a large tract of dead patchy land. It's ugly and intimidating, but sure enough out back, the entrance has a clear gate and the dirt leading up it is worn and fresh.

Max's visibly nervous, trailing a safe distance behind me. "You know I've never left the United States before." He says as I unlock the bolt on the main door and push, "We never went on vacation either. My parents would sometimes visit their home country, but they wouldn't take me with them."

As we enter mill's main space, his voice echoes harshly in the open room. The huge protruding blades of the saw machines glint against the weak light filtering in through the ceiling windows, the only light source in the entire warehouse, and dusty crates line the walls. The place is desolate. I begin to search the sides of each machine, looking for the mailbox block Hester told me the licenses would be.

"Have you ever rode a boat?" he continues, "I haven't really. I've been on a yacht once, but I wasn't actually allowed on deck. It was Gavin’s yacht. That was the first time I met him. But I didn’t see him too much then. I wasn’t allowed on deck, you know."

It hurts to hear him ramble.

I finally find the mail station, hidden behind the third saw machine, and I punch in the pin to the second to last box. Sure enough, the licenses are there and I sigh loudly, pocketing them. 

"I think because my parents were so overprotective, I never really had close relationships with anybody." He continues, painfully jabbering. "All my friends seemed artificial or interchangeable. No one ever liked me for me. You're the only real person in my life."

I'm not sure why I let that sentence bother me so much.

I turn back around like I want to tell him something, but just looking at him, a cold-looking kid standing in the shadows of glinting blades, I decide against it. I'm locking the cubical back up when I hear Max emit a harsh, half-stifled cry and then a deep voice bellow, "Oh my god, you're fucking here, I can't believe it."

My heart stops as I turn around to see Tweed, barreling at me, swinging a large, studded, military-grade mace. It's instinct that saves me, as my arm shoots up immediately to catch it, just before it lands, and I maneuver it from the man's grasp before flinging it to the side.

I grab his arms and pin them against the wall behind him while I try and grab the gun from my holster, but he's used his elbow to bash my nose in and-- _oh fuck_. In the moments I'm blinded, he grabs my arm and slams me against the metal pillar behind us, and then pummels me with his fists, with an uppercut to the jaw and two the under the eye, all before I've even gotten my vision back. The final blow to my solar plexus is what sends me to the ground, reeling, and he's ziptied my hands and legs five times over before I've even realized.

I feel a sharp pinch and I turn to see the head of a needle sticking out of my arm, injecting a thick clear fluid into my bloodstream.

Tweed smiles coldly, tossing the empty syringe aside, "This might make you a little more compliant." He confiscates my gun and my knife and pats down the rest of my body.

I'm waiting for him to slit my throat or beat me to fucking death with that atrocious bat, but I open my eyes to see him grabbing my kid instead.

"So this is the Demir kid everybody won't shut up about!" he laughs, turning Max over and around like he's inspecting an object. "What a _find_ , Hank, my boy. I see why you ran off with him now," he laughs as I spit blood to my left and he scoffs, "He looks like a flat-chested girl!"

I'm still trying to catch my breath, thinking rapidly, _it can't end like this, God, we were so close, it can't end like this_. "Where's the rest of you?" I spit.

I regret asking once I see him smile. God, I hate that smile. I know Tweed can never resist bragging and he affirms this, "I was the one to discover that Larry was the one who let the kid out. I'd suspected him from the very moment I knew you'd left too. He was the only one with all the security at his authorization, and please, a fucking _Shö_ could never break into our bunker and escape without Larry noticing. But Larry covered for you so well, destroying your room and master key in a way that only a Shö could, and I couldn't even convince Charles at first. That is, until I managed to get access to Larry's talkie. Man, Larry tried to burn it once he knew we'd figured him out, but you know how durable those things are and _bang_ ," he snaps his fingers, "Charles got the drill and took his limbs and head off, just like that."

I scream nonsensically.

"I'm not too shabby at gadgetry myself. I managed to track you to your cabin, but you'd left by then, and then I had the genius idea of just accessing your phone records. I realized the only reason you'd be calling both Hester and Favis was if you wanted to leave the country, so I called up Favis and ordered him, if you guys dropped by, to clip a tracker on the ID documents, and sure enough, I was able to follow you guys down here. I put a tracker on myself too, so Charles and his cabinet could dispatch with ease once I found you. They’re cleaning up any record of you now." He tilts his head, smiling. He looks so proud. "They're not too far now, and this little escapade should easily hand me that head cabinet position that you left behind. Catching the biggest snitch since '09 and the Demir's kid _alive_."

I'm torn between two states-- drowsiness and pure terror. My vision's growing hazy already, despite how badly my heart is racing, and I'm not sure whether I'm hallucinating my disorientation or whether the drug he'd given me was already kicking in. Tweed's fingers are between Max's overall straps. There's a pit in my stomach as I spit, "So that's what this is all about." 

"See you just don't get it do you, Hank? I knew you'd slip up. I had no beef against Larry. I fuckin hated _you_. Your sorry ass didn't belong in the gang. You didn't care about taking down the Kæ or about Charles or the Montivellos. All you wanted was-- _fuck_ \--!"

Max's stabbed him, well scratched him really, with the Bowie knife I'd given him. Tweed drops him immediately and Max raises the small blade at him threateningly when he takes a step forward, "Don't you fucking dare."

Tweed looks at him in wonder, then throws his head back and practically howls in laughter, "Oh _fuck_ , this is rich!"

"Stop," he says again when Tweed advances on him, and he sounds like he's about to cry.

"Don't worry, baby. The rest of the gang is on their way, and man, are they eager to see you, but for now, we have a lot of time together."

"I'll fucking kill you."

"What?" He fakes hurt, "I'm the good guy!"

"You murdered my parents!" He shrieks.

There's an awful silence.

"Holy shit. Hank, you didn't tell him?" Tweed's gleeful smile looks wide enough to physically hurt.

"Tweed, stop--"

"Didn't he tell you, little boy? Didn't he tell you that _he_ was the one who killed your parents. That _he_ was the one who planned and coordinated the whole incursion."

There's this awful silence before he tries to deny it, "N-No--", he says and I recognize that inflection, when his voice jerks from the strain of not crying, "Yuh-You're _lying._ "

"No, child. Boss Charles appointed him. He bribed the authorities, he led our men back to the base, and he slit their throats. And he's the one who brought you to us." 

"YOU'RE LYING!"

"Don't you get it? He wanted you all to himself. He was about to cart you to Mexico where no one could ever track you down again, and he could do whatever he wanted with you."

 _"He's fucking lying Max--_ " I want to properly defend myself but I think I'm about to vomit from guilt, "Don't listen to him, he's--"

"You know what?" Tweed interrupts, turning on me with an absolutely murderous expression, and I'm just trying to figure out how the hell I'd underestimated him so bad, how I never picked up on how much he hated me, "I've had enough of you." He advances on me, swinging his bat, and I sneer at him.

"I've injected a tracker on me, fucker. Stop my heart and the FBI'll know I'm dead and hightail here. And even if you manage to escape, you bet your ass the arriving cops'll get Boss Charles and whoever else is coming."

Tweed smiles. "Oh, Hank. You wish I'd kill you. You have no _idea_ what Charles plans to do with you." And a fist blinds me.

He grabs his mace again. He swings it close enough for me to realize the studs on the sides are actually sharp miniature spikes, spikes that have just hit and embedded themselves in the flesh of my cheek and eye. I scream and he goes in again and again.

I can smell my own blood. 

I fold into myself to protect my face, baring my back instead, and he takes new exposed surface gladly, hammering my flesh to bone. It feels like he's nailing me down to the floor.

There's another person screaming in the room with me, and it's not Tweed. The spikes are ripping off and lodging themselves in my back. 

But suddenly, the bat is gone and so is Tweed. 

The behemoth man is stumbling backwards, bellowing in pain. I can see the handle of the Bowie knife once again, jammed deep to the hilt this time in Tweed's shoulder, just inches shy of his neck. Tweed turns around, and with one violent swing of his hand, sends Max flying.

Tweed drops the bloodied mace, and rips the blade back out, bellowing in anger and pain, and tosses the knife at my direction. It misses, clattering to the side of me. He snatches a handkerchief from his pocket and stuffs it down my throat. 

Max picks himself off the floor and runs immediately for the main door. Tweed doesn't stop him, and I quickly realize why, for when Max grabs the handle, the door doesn't yield. He desperately yanks against the chained lock and then just starts banging it with his fists, yelling in frustration.

The grinning gang-head pats his pockets so I can hear the keys jangle. I can't fucking believe I hadn't heard him come in, let alone lock the door after us. He'd taken every precaution Charles would. He smiles at me. "Now, I'm going to take your kid and make him suck me off."

"I don't want to." Max's voice trembles as he takes another step back against the door. 

"Don't fucking lie to me kid. I know your father's let Gavin put his hands down your pants before, and don't _fucking tell me_ Hank didn't touch you all this time either."

Max chokes.

Tweed takes another step towards him and Max just bolts. He's fast as hell, but Tweed's grabbed him by the waist and has hurled him at the wall with a loud _smack_. Tweed comes up behind him, promptly yanking him up and Max jerks against his grip. Tweed simply takes his wrist, and in one movement, snaps it. Max's scream reverberates sharply through the room.

He then takes the tiny kid and slams him down on the workbench next to him. Tweed rips the embroidered straps right off the denim then just pulls the overalls right off Max's head. Then, flicking out his customized counter-strike knife, a knife sharpened to get through bone quick, he slashes through the little pastel T-shirt underneath. Tweed is purposefully sloppy and the blade cuts the kid up. 

My limbs are heavy with the drug and the room is spinning, but it does nothing to sedate the ballistic rage and terror coursing through me. _No! No! It can't end like this! God, no!_

I'm pulling so hard against the zip-ties I think I've broken my wrists. I'm beginning to buck violently against the crates behind me; trying to get closer but away, all at the same time. 

Max's good hand keeps coming up weakly, defensively, and Tweed takes that hand and snaps it too.

His screaming gets worse. 

_I failed him! I failed him! I failed him!_

He twists feverishly when Tweed's at his shorts, and I can't understand how he's still conscious enough to struggle. The tiny black shorts do come off, but not without losing a few buttons.

_Jasper! Jasper! Jasper!_

I'm insane with rage. I can't breathe. I think I'm going to choke to death on my gag. Everything I've ever wanted for us has gone to shit. I can't control my keening and I think I'm going to die.

Max's switching rapidly between sobbing in pain, hyperventilating, and begging the man to let him go. The sound of his throaty, desperate, pained crying is the worst sound I have ever heard. Tweed's flipped him over so he can face him and I can see a sort of sick fondness cross his face. He likes the begging. He likes the crying. 

Tweed pushes the tip of his cock to his entrance, but Max's so tiny, his entrance doesn't yield. It just pushes his entire body forward.

Tweed pauses, and then laughs loudly, the horrible sound echoing through the empty warehouse, "Would you look at that?" He says, patting Max's face affectionately before shoving his shoulders and head up against the wall behind him to hold him down steady.

Max screams loud enough to hurt my own ears as Tweed pushes himself in, laborious inch by inch.

_NO, NO!_

I scream repeatedly against my gag but I'm drowned out by Max's louder ones. He's crying in an incoherent mix of sobbing, begging, and screaming that rattles the garage panels and echoes against the walls until it sounds like there are 10 little boys being tortured in the same warehouse, and _God_ , and Tweed hasn't even _thrusted_ yet, hasn't even gotten all the way _in_ yet. He's taking his sweet time, or maybe it's just that difficult for him to jam himself up there. But Tweed must be getting impatient because he thrusts once, forcing himself in further, and Max's crying stops near instantly in this deafening silence as his mouth just opens in a silent _O_ of shock. Tweed thrusts harder in response, hard enough to break the kid's hip, smacking Max's head against the wall behind him and the child makes this single guttural sound from the back of his throat. Like he's dying. 

My vision is blinded by tears and my gag is thick with saliva and blood and vomit and I think I'm going to choke to death on one of them. The drug Tweed's given me seems to amplify all the worst things the room: the glinting blade, the sound of his crying, the bright red on his throat.

A decorative floodlight from a neighboring building flashes faintly through the glass windows above, making a round over the building floor mockingly, as if someone was actually watching us. It makes the fresh blood on the back of Tweed's neck glint as it passes through the darkness of the warehouse. 

And as the light passes over my corner, something else glints too.

My heart stops. The blade he threw at me. _Oh my god--_

The effects of the drug was just threatening to put me under, but in new profound burst of strength, all I can think about is my _blade._

I roll over unto my back, driven by this feverish energy, smearing blood across the gritty floor, and when I raise my knees up to my chest, I can feel the movement jamming the dirt and spikes in deeper into my open wounds. I shimmy the arms tied around my back, down and under my rear, and, just about dislocating my shoulders in the process. I manage to loop my hands under my feet and finally get my ziptied wrists in front of me. I pull out the gag and grab the stray blade, blinking rapidly to clear the fog from my vision. 

I exhale and inhale, my rib cage burning, before inching my arms under me and pushing myself up on my hands and knees. I use the crates to push myself up the rest of the way and I moan as the blood rushes to my head. I sway. I can't see anything at all for a moment. My limbs feel both completely dissociated and cripplingly heavy as I stumble forward. The only thing I can properly focus on is the bright glint of the blade grasped tightly in between my tied wrists as I move forward, and then suddenly, Tweed's closer than I anticipated and without hesitation, I drive the blade sloppily into the back of his throat. The other end comes out in the space under his chin.

It's a minute before the blood comes gushing out and it sprays the child beneath him like a showerhead. I pull the weapon back out and Tweed's enormous form just twitches before collapsing forward. I roll the heaving body off of Max and drive the blade into Tweed's face this time. I place my wrists around an exposed blade on the sawmill machine and slit the ties.

Max's completely still, looking at me, not blinking, with wide baby eyes and mouth still open in a silent scream. His screaming has broken the blood vessels in his eyes. 

I pull him upright and bend over, kissing him on the left side of his mouth. He twitches in shock. I open my mouth to apologize. I open my mouth to reassure him, to say something, but my sentences slur together at once and my throat closes up the moment I open my mouth. My vision blurs as I just look at the mess he is, and _God_ this is all I tried to save him from the whole time, and sloppy tears stream down my face.

He just _sobs._

"Your arm," I manage to say, taking deep breaths, forcing control. I take his wrist and he flinches badly, moaning. 

"Hospital," I mumble, wiping his face, "You--we need a hospital. And we need to get out of here--as soon as possible."

I redress him the best I can with his shredded clothing. His overalls, oh man, the cute little overalls that he'd hated so much. I sloppily retie the denim straps to try and keep him all together, gingerly avoiding where he's been cut open and my arms are shaking violently. I don't even know if it's because of the drug or the shock anymore.

His eyes look like blue glass. I kiss him on his forehead as I take him into my arms and his eyes shutter. My own vision is growing hazy too. I snatch the keys from Tweed's pocket, and when he twitches in response, I freeze. Leaning in, I can see his chest still heaving slightly. He's alive, I realize, barely, but I leave the blade in his face regardless.

I want Charles and the cabinet to find him when they arrive. I want Tweed to testify to him, if he can even speak, and I want him to confess to the Monitivellos what he did and who did this to him and I want it to be his last words.

As I stumble out the warehouse, into what was now night, I remember I had come in with a bad feeling in my stomach, and now I knew why.

 

\---------------

 

The fastest I can drive with my vision dancing this bad is five miles an hour, on the route to the nearest hospital. I don't even know what my plan is. There was no way I could just waltz in with this now nationally-recognizable, supposedly dead kid and my criminal record.

I wonder if it's worth it now, just to submit ourselves to police custody. It would guarantee proper medical treatment, but it'd also separate us and send me to the chair after what I'm sure will be a fairly short, highly publicized trial. I wonder if it'll be a worthwhile sacrifice, to just trust the police to keep Max safe instead.

I park in front of the small hospital, but I don't get out. It's past midnight and this particular parking lot is completely empty.

But I know I can't trust any of the police forces. If I truly could, I would've just handed Max to them in the very beginning. But I've seen time and time again what the Montivellos and their money can do. And I know, with Charles already in the city, manipulating local police would child's play.

I regret not taking the Shö up on their offer.

A practitioner leaves the building, holding a briefcase and a pair of smocks in one arm, probably going home for the night. He's heading around back to the other parking lot and I have exactly half a second to make a decision.

I jump out the car and barrel towards the man, half-high with adrenaline. The man spots me halfway and his face just turns completely white. I suppose in normal circumstances, I'd be scared too, seeing a huge bloodied man barreling at me in an alley past midnight. He drops his bag and immediately starts sprinting. 

I'm closing the distance between us dangerously quickly and he reaches into his pocket. He's grabbing...pepper spray? I leap and grab his wrist and smack it out of his hands. 

The man attempts to yell but I jab his nose with my elbow and grab his other hand. He tries to bite that arm and I shove him sideways harshly and I feel his ankle give out. He screams. I've twisted it. I take that moment to flip him over and ram him into the ground.

I clamp a hand over his mouth before he can scream again. 

"Listen-- _listen_ to me," I hiss, trying to calm him, "I've got a little kid on me. He's got a broken arm and he's bleeding out. I need to get him to safety. I'm not going to kill you, I swear. I have no reason to."

The man eyes are full of terror, but he's stopped actively fighting me. I see his eyes assess my wounds and then look around me, for said kid.

"You know the Demirs right? The attack on the pharmaceuticals? I know you've heard of it on the news. I have the missing kid. I swear I'll let you go. You can tell the police everything after we're gone. This is for him."

I can feel his heart race below my chest and my own vision's beginning to blur as the adrenaline wears off. "I swear." I'm so close to begging, so close to just crying over this man's chest, "Please."

I move my hands and the man doesn't bolt. He doesn't have a choice really, with that twisted ankle and all. 

He's still for the longest time. I wonder if he's trying to calculate his chances of being able to outrun me. I know he's come to the obvious conclusion when he finally straightens up and faces me. 

"He's in my car," I say, and terror fills his eyes again. I keep the man in front of me as we make our way back out the side of the building and into the parking lot. I know there are security cameras catching everything now, but there's nothing I can do about that and it's the least of my worries at the moment.

I open the passenger door, not sure what to do exactly. The doctor inhales sharply when he sees Max, who's passed out by now, and he immediately extends his arms, "Oh dear--" he whispers, gingerly taking the bloody kid from the seat.

He moves aside the ruined denim to assess him, then roughly inspects the state of my back. My breathing is shallow. My head hurts so badly.

"You need to come to my office," he says quietly.

I stare at him evenly as I bring out my gold balisong from the car compartment and I watch his eyes widen as I flick the dual blade open. "We can go. But if you pull a fast one I will fucking kill you. I need this child safe and I need these drugs out of my system."

He nods jerkily and I take Max back from him. "The hospital still has people in it," he says, "But the back left of the second floor should be clear and it has the stuff you need. The thing is, the cameras will have you on footage."

"Will anyone respond instantly?"

"N-No," he says, "They'll discover it tomorrow, probably."

"That's fine." I grab my duffel, "I'll follow you."

He warily eyes the bloody fucking mess that was the left side of my torso. “Sir. You need an emergency room. Not a general practitioner.”

When I look at him again, he falters, “Do I look like I have a choice?”

The young man takes a deep breath as if mentally steeling himself, and I follow him into the building and up the stairs.

He's right, this area of the second floor is completely abandoned and I'm impressed as he slides his card and lies into the intercom explaining he forgot his stuff. The door is then unlocked and he leads me into the room marked _General Practitioner_. I have a bad feeling as we go down the hallway and he turns on the light for one of the patient rooms. 

He leads me to the bed in the corner and then reels in another bed to place Max on. Now that I've gotten a chance to sit, my body's finally shutting down. The running has sapped any energy I had left, and before I've even noticed, the man's injected a solution into my arm. I squint to read it's label as he walks away. It's a sedative of some sort. 

He lays Max down, who's a sickly white and looks like an infant on the stretcher. I get up to touch him and the man simply pushes me back down and I can't get up again.

The sedative seems to accelerate the process by which I was falling unconscious. I realize then, dimly, what a helpless position I've put myself in. This man had absolutely no reason to believe me. He could just call the police now that he's safe and I'm handicapped.

"Please don't hurt him," I say, grabbing the doctor's hand desperately, and he yanks his arm away. He seems appalled by how much I was shaking. Everything just seemed so hazy, and I can't think straight, _I can't--please, help him, please._

I want to tell the doctor, who's backed himself into the corner watching me warily, waiting for me to _fall unconscious_ , oh god. _I didn't hurt the kid!_ I want to tell him. I'd never hurt Max! But then I'm thinking, _I tried to rape him too! I gave him bruises, too!_

I cry loudly and the doctor flinches against the wall.

_Oh God, I've killed Jasper all over again! I can't lose him again. Dear God, please!_

I've never prayed to God this much in my entire life.

I leap up and grab my duffel and, hastily, throw fistfuls of the carefully rolled bills at him. They fall uselessly to the floor. He doesn't touch it. I moan loudly and I sound like an uncontrollable animal. I feel as if I'm in a separate body, watching a grown man with a bloody back begging and whining pathetically over a bed.

I inhale harshly and I fall back against the bed, grabbing my throat, my limbs too heavy to move. Tears stream down my face, "God please," I moan loudly, "Don't give him over to the police. They're all bought. They'll hand him over to Charles. They'll kill him, they'll kill him. Dear God, Dear God, Dear God, please."

The last thing I see before I submit to sleep is the doctor's face, and he whispers, "You'll go to heaven." And it's the last thing I hear.

_If there is a heaven, I think, it's a heaven where the kid is safe and I can never hurt him again._

  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fucking excruciating to write. 
> 
> Also, it won't please everyone but know this: I know how it ends.


	7. Saterdaze

When I wake, I wake to white light, and it's all tranquil enough to really be a sort of heaven.

But it's only when the rest of the sounds of room catch up to me--the clinical beeping, the heart rate monitor, the low talking-- do I realize it's all an illusion. 

The immediate pain and numbness catches up to me in the instant my eyes shoot open. I'm disoriented, squinting in the blinding overhead light, trying to figure out the basics-- _where am I? who am I?_ \--and when everything from yesterday comes flooding back to me in one harsh, nauseating roll, I choke.

Immediately, I push myself up off the bed, looking for only one thing, and the moment I spot his stretcher, I rocket towards it.

Max's eyes open to the sound of me approaching him and they're completely void of any emotion. One of my hands automatically reach out for him, and he meets my hand with his, but it's in the most dissociative manner possible. His face is confused. 

"Max," I say so quietly I'm not even sure I've vocalized it.

Max tightens his fist around my finger. He blinks, looking at me like he doesn't recognize me, and then all at once, his eyes widen and he just breathes, "Hank" and it's the only sound in the whole room to me. 

I let go of the breath I didn't know I was holding, relief flooding me. I never remembered being such a fucking pussy, but just the sight of him, just the sum of him being alive and here, jams my throat and I can't speak for a moment. Tears prick painfully at my dry eyes and I blink them back rapidly. "Are you in pain?" I derail, sitting on the bed. 

It's such a stupid question, with the answer being heavily apparent in his reopened facial scars, the splint around his arm, and the fucking rape-kit I can see opened to his left.

But he shakes his head and says "No".

I begin to unsee. I'm not in control of my voice. Blinking rapidly, I turn to my left, and I see a man for a split second, with his face contorted in pain and streaked with tears, his hands white from clutching a tiny kid. The man's face is uncharacteristically vulnerable and emotional and it unnerves me.

I rip my eyes away from the mirror and let go of Max.

I assess the rest of him, both to scope out his state and avoid eye contact, and I conclude he's in far better shape than yesterday. His left hand is heavily bandaged in structural gauze while his right hand is in a splint, and I register only then that mines was too. When I reach to touch my back, I find a thick layer of bandages covering its entirety. I'm trying to get a mirror view of it when I see him. The unnamed doctor. 

He's fixed a small brace around his ankle and I notice only now that he's been watching us the whole time, thoughtfully from his seat in the corner.

Realization hits me, and, overwhelmed with gratefulness, I reach out for the man, mouth open, ready to vocalize every kind of thanks I could figure, when suddenly, I freeze. I hear-- voices. There are people outside the room. I can see their shadows against moving the fogged glass, talking in hushed whispers and the blood drains from my face.

"You called--", My voice breaks from the cold terror that quickly replaces the gratefulness.

"It's regular office hours," the man explains tensely, getting up, "I told them you were a frantic parent of mines with a kid with diabetes."

I'm not sure what to say.

"Max told me everything...Hank." He's staring at me openly, curiously, again. 

I hoped Max didn't tell him _everything._

"I put you two in splints instead casts. It's not optimal for healing but will give you enough mobility until you reach the Caribbean."

"You're just letting us go?" I ask point-blank.

A thin-lipped smile tells me I’m pushing his patience. In a sort of professional suppression of nervousness, he presses his palms together firmly before replying, "Oh trust me, I was going to submit you two to the authorities the instant I got the kid out of critical condition. But can you imagine my shock when I realized he was the kid from the ransom video."

"We had to change our look." I say a little dryly.

"He was cognizant enough to tell me you weren't the one to put him in that position, rather, you saved him. I'm sure I'm breaking every kind of law possible right now, and it was just my luck that you had to choose me--" the young man looks pained, but he composes himself before continuing, "-- but if anybody asks, you forced me at gunpoint." He forces a smile.

I can only shrug awkwardly.

"I understand that the parents are definitely dead." He continues, "So the kid isn't safe." Wonder momentarily replaces the man's stress before he says, "You did a lot for this kid." And I feel like there's an accusatory _why_ he’s left unsaid.

I don't have the energy to even begin explaining myself, so I derail. "What was I injected with?"

"Nothing fatal. It was a mix of prescription opioid painkillers and a Valium sedative," he says, "Nothing too bad, but you were nearly overdosed. You should be feeling fine now."

"I feel much better," I say honestly, "I can't feel my back either."

"That'll catch up soon enough," he grimaces, "I'll give you some morphine to go."

"Please take my money," I say a little helplessly, motioning towards the duffel. 

"And have my family wondering if I robbed somebody?" He jokes dryly, eyeing the duffel, "No thanks. I can do without blood money. Besides, you'll need it."

The doctor pushes Max, who had pulled himself upright, gently back down. "Just a minute, kiddo. I'll get you a wheelchair and a smock, first. We can't have people recognizing the two of you. Mr. Hank here can wheel you two to the office in the back. There's a locked fire escape in there." The doctor hands me a key. When I look up to meet his eyes, I see an open admiration and anticipation in them that fills me with something undefinable, "Leave it by the ladder and I'll come pick it up."

"Now?"

"Yes, now," he says a little bitingly, opening the side closet and unwrapping a bed sheet and a hospital gown. "My morning shift wasn't even in this hall, so you two should hightail before anyone gets suspicious. At one point, someone at the front desk is going to realize that something doesn't add up, and that's when I'll have to cry "gunpoint" to the police. But hopefully, by then, you two have reached your boat. "

I pull the gown over Max's head while the doctor carts in a wheelchair. When he seats Max in the chair and pulls an oversized sleeping mask over his eyes so I can’t meet them, I'm glad. The man packs a supply bag for us next, filling it with painkillers, replacement bandages, and a card with his name and number on it. His name was Manny.

"Call me," he says quietly enough so only I can hear. "In a few years when you both are safe. I've stored the DNA of his assailant and the details of the attack if you ever need it. The man's dead right?"

I dry swallow, "Yeah."

"Good. Just let me know if you two make it. I want to know if I did the right thing." He seals the bag and hands it to me, then unlocks the door so I can wheel out Max, "Good luck."

I jerk my head once in a goodbye as I pass him and enter the main hallway. Holding my breath, I avoid eye contact as I push past a rushed nurse and head for the office room. Ditching the wheelchair by a filing cabinet, I grab Max and dart for the fire-exit.

The escape hatch leads outside to a set of steel helix stairs that runs down the back of the building. I have to climb down slowly, both because the flimsy stairs are crooked and because it's painful to bend with Max in my arms. I tuck the key under the last stair like Manny had instructed and circle the building to get to the right parking lot.

Max is as silent and as unresponsive as my duffel bag, and a pit settles in my stomach when I remember that Tweed had told him what I did that night.

I seat him, the duffel, and the supply bag in the passenger seat before heading around to the driver's. As I wait for the car to warm up, the pit worsens. I feel like my mouth is full of live wires. "How are you feeling?" I ask to break the silence.

He shrugs slowly, "I can't feel anything." The scars on his face, the ones I tried so hard to patch up, are surrounded by fresh ones. There's something ugly and possessive about the new bruise on his cheek.

I'm just about to call him out on lying, because he just looks absolutely terrible when he says:

"You look awful."

I grin broadly and open the sun visor, "Really?" I trace the ugly gash under my jaw, "I thought this was rather fetching?"

He forces a short laugh in response, and I know he's just trying to make me feel better, and it wrenches my gut further. 

"Max," I say abruptly, "I want to get something out of the way." and he stops smiling immediately, chapped lower lip drawing between teeth.

"In that warehouse, when Tweed--when he--," I feel like I'm not in control of my voice. Talking was so much easier before all this. “When he told you--your parents, that I--"

"I understand," he interrupts, "I know he lied. I didn't believe him."

The words get stuck in my mouth for a moment. "Yeah," I say, recovering, "I'm glad you know."

I set the GPS for Miami and begin to back the car out. Everything around me seems to have gotten unnaturally silent-- all I can hear is the palm trees swaying above us as I reverse-- and when I enter the highway, I notice that the clear skies has turned grey. It's about to rain. We're only a few hours away now.

_I'll tell him one day._

 

\-------------------------------------------

 

I don't need to check the navigation to know we've reached Miami. All I have to do is look out the window and see how the Tampian suburbia had been replaced with neon bars, polished restaurants, and sandy palm trees. When I begin to see flashes of water between the buildings, capping the horizons, and the beginnings of boardwalks, I call up Hester. After congratulating me sardonically on surviving, he tells me he's got a shift to finish and gives me the directions to a public library to wait at. Before I head there, I program my GPS to the nearest Hydraulic car compactor first. 

Max eyes my constant fidgeting warily. When I finally see the junkyard loom ahead, I let out a short exasperated sigh. I knew from the beginning that I’d have to do this, yet I was dreading it. "I have to ditch my car," I say sadly to him.

"Oh," He breathes, sounding relieved. I think I'd freaked him out. I ask him to pack anything around the car into the duffel, and he does, asking me periodically whether something was important or not. When he gets to the glove compartment, he stops at Gavin's letter. He knows what it's for. He's not that green.

"And this?" 

I take the letter from his hands and tear it. When I throw it out the window, I feel my soul falling with it. "Gavin can go to hell."

The sleepy, overalled man at the front office looks just as distraught as myself when I ask him to crush the Cadillac I'd parked by his machine. I was beginning to suspect the owner was planning on just copping the car, so I drop him a threat and a bribe and the man's disdain quickly turns to nervousness at the bills in his hand.

Before I leave, I ask him for a copy of the local metro schedule, and he rushes to look it up on his old desktop. While he waits for the copy to print, I notice he eyes Max warily, more specifically the horrible facial wounds, and I think the man fears I've kidnapped him. It's not a false assumption. 

Once we're outside, I lock the car and fling the car keys as far as possible into the mountains of junk. Max follows the path, squinting against the dust and sun, before looking up at me, "What now?"

"The bus," I say, waving the copy and taking his hand, "We've gotta wait at a library for my friend Hester. He's the one getting us a boat."

It takes us about an hour to figure out the map routes, walk to the stop, and actually travel to the library in what should've been a simple fifteen-minute drive, but I don't complain. Max looks deadbeat, so I let him rest in the kid's section while I swing by the neighboring 7-Eleven to get us some food. I'm more paranoid than before about walking him around in public, especially since I had nothing to try and hide his injuries with, but I'm more afraid that the kid's going to eventually fall sick from all the medication and sleep deprivation. 

When I return, Max isn't there anymore. I find him further down in the resources unit with the public computers. He has apparently found a desktop someone had forgotten to log out of, and when I peer over his shoulder, I can see that he's looking himself up on the search engine. I can exactly tell when he gives up, exactly when he realizes he's become irrelevant to the public, because his hyper clicking slows and his posture slumps slightly. 

I come up behind him, pretending I'd just arrived, and Max asks quietly, "Did you guys bribe them too?" I pretend I don't know what he's talking about.

He's silent for a moment before saying amusedly, "There's this online tribune for me."

"Really?" I ask, taking a chair, and he bends over the keyboard typing quickly. 

"Yeah. For public appearances mainly. My parents would get a crew to show up periodically and stage some candids. My parents wanted to humanize themselves to Tammany, but I don't think it ever worked."

When the colorful page pops up with some cutesy pictures and sappy quotes, I realize it's meant to be a digital scrapbook, a kind of blog dedicated to the Demirs. Well, dedicated to Max really, cause that's all I can see from the pictures. I can understand why he felt like a showpiece.

The main picture is of him as a newborn, _born two months early_ , as the caption states, and apparently only weighing three pounds. He's as tiny as a kitten with a head already full of curly hair and his mouth a tiny raspberry. 

"My lunch weighs three pounds," I joke and he grimaces.

As the pictures progress, his squinty grey eyes widen into a bright, bottle green. He's three in the next set of pictures, dressed in a baseball uniform, grinning broadly with a gap between his teeth and his eyes are more blue now. His father smiles proudly. His mother is a goddess.

Max looks a little embarrassed and eventually leans over to take the mouse away from me, "You don't have to look at all of them. I was just saying."

"There's nothing better to do," I say.

He sighs, "I have to go to the bathroom." He slides off his chair and I continue scrolling.

Another portrait, a family one, is taken right outside the mayor of Tammany's personal mansion. They're dressed in party attire here. Max, I notice, though he's rather light-skinned and sky-eyed like his father, looks more like his mother here, in his cheekbones and smile.

I want to know everything about the Demirs. 

The picture that catches my eye next is the one I've seen smeared over the grocery store tabloids, where Max's thigh is cut wide open and his face is wet with tears. A work accident, the caption vaguely explains, and I wonder how much of the Demir family wasn't photographed.

Max's smiling again in the following picture, with Frank Demir's large arm draped over him. He's seven here and he's missing several front teeth, and I’m troubled as to whether they're simply baby teeth. The picture below it shows him at the doctor's office, and I realize with surprise after reading the caption, that Max was diabetic.

By the next page, Max's teeth are back and he's probably nine-ish. He's grown a lot more hair and he's in a variety of sports uniforms, like track and soccer and basketball. He looks more like his mother here, with his countless summer freckles, ethnic tan, and thick eyelashes. His eyes are more multi-colored, just like they are now. The mother has kind, dark, doe eyes. She's easily one of the prettiest women I've ever seen, and she looks so happy next to her family.

I'd killed the parents before I knew how wonderful they all could've been. But that's an illusion too, I remind myself. 

I note morbidly how the digital book ends on his tenth birthday.

"Hank." Max says, from behind me, voice weak, and I turn around to see him extend his hand. 

I get up immediately, "Are you hurt?"

"No, no, your back. You are. It's bleeding."

"What?" I promptly reach for my back and I pat around until I feel a damp patch on the fabric around my left scapula, "Shit."

When Max notices how much my hand shakes, the fear in his eyes increases threefold. "There's a sofa down the hall. You c-can lay on it to try and stem the bleeding for a while, then we can go to the bathroom and I can try to re-bandage it. "

We don't have that many bandages, but I don't tell him that. "Just drop it, Max, I'm fine." I say, "It doesn't hurt." I pull my jacket over the shirt to hide the stain, but that only makes him panic more. 

"Hank, what if we have to get you to a hospital again? That could get infected. My father told me if you bleed that much you could--"

"Shut up," I snap suddenly and he does. "I'm fine. Whatever this is, it's temporary. I downed about half of the aspirin bottle before coming in. When I tell you it doesn't hurt, I'm not lying." I stare at the kid evenly, intimidatingly, but there isn't fear in his eyes. It's pure concern. "When I tell you to drop it, do that." And I know he'll do as he's told.

He sits down across from me, solemnly, quietly, and I can't help but wonder if the nasty scar on his leg from the pictures is still there. But instead, to change the subject, I say, "You never told me you were diabetic."

"I think I've been a little preoccupied." He retorts, but a sort of gentility softens his features. I smirk. He's still a little pale.

"Let's go eat."

There's a cafe in the basement of the library, a vast, badly-lit, golden lounge that smells heavily of freshly brewed coffee and toasted bagels. The shop has just closed and few people are still scattered around the countless tables, talking and relaxing. Some random teen has found her way unto the stage and is strumming a guitar for an audience of nobody, reciting a mix of spoken word and lyrical music. It's oddly tranquil.

_"What you feel for me is what writers for centuries have tried to write about. I am not sex nor money, but pure exhilaration."_

I set down the food I'd bought and eventually realize that Max's been staring at me the whole time. "How are you feeling?" he asks me.

_"And if you don't see me in Heaven, then ask about me. If you remember me, I'll remember you."_

"I'm happy as long as you are." I say. It sounds so fucking fake but I’ve never been this transparent in my life.

_"I am your moon and your moonlight, too. I am your flower garden and your water, too."_

He smiles for the first time since the hospital and it physically hurts me. This is the worst state I've ever been in my life, but when I look at him, I think it's not so bad after all. 

_"He is my redemption, He is my purpose."_

 

\-------------------------------------

 

Hester still drives the same ugly car he had fifteen years ago--a beaten and ancient Pontiac Bonneville--and I actually find it endearing, that some things never change, but I'll never tell him except for through brash jokes about it. The first thing I do is tell him about my back and he refrains from his usual bear hug and shakes my hand instead. He's one of the few men I know who greets people with a hug, and while I pretend to hate it, I've always liked his easy-going attitude. 

The vivid fast food signs are a contrast to a cool blue sky. As we drive, the sun looks like it's setting directly into the city. 

Hester takes us to his _casa_ , as he continuously refers to it as, a remote little shack surrounded by dense forestry situated right in front of a large lake that empties directly into the Gulf of Mexico. The sand in his backyard is pink and the clear water of the lake is the clearest cool-blue. The lacy leaves of the Sycamore trees weave right into the fabric of the sky.

It's pretty messy and cluttered inside the house, but in an oddly pleasant combination, with a bunch of wild potted plants, marble fixings, and old Indian rugs. I knew Hester was the last guy to ever decorate, but I also knew him to always have people over, as exhibited by his hoard of futons and indoor hammocks. "Are you sure Charles doesn't know about this place?" I ask as we pull my bags inside.

"The fucking landowners don't even know about this place, G."

I can see the lake directly outside his wide, glass back doors, and it's a vibrant pink now, mirroring the late sunset. 

"Man," Hester says, squinting at Max in the overhead light with an expression both concerned and amused, "What happened to you, kiddo? Didjya make uncle Hank mad?"

I snap before I think. "I would never fucking hit him." And that's a lie too.

"Chill." He says, plopping down on the living room sofa, "I was just kidding."

I'm embarrassed, but thankfully, Hester makes another crude joke in the same minute, laughing loudly to himself. I remember now why I used to hang out with him so much before.

He's lining up his stash of marijuana, and when I see Max eye it, I take his hand and say, "I'll take him to bed first."

"Whatever you say."

I realize after a full minute of palming the bedroom wall from the outside, that the lights were busted, but I also quickly realize that the room doesn't need one. The opposing wall is entirely made up of windows, directly facing the lake, and the bedroom walls shimmer constantly with the wave's reflections.

Hester had set out an extra king mattress on the floor for us, sandwiched tightly between the windows and bedroom dresser. There’s barely any floor left in the room.

Max lays on his back as I unfold a comforter for him and I ask him for permission before I lift his shirt. He doesn't really say yes, he just lifts his sweatshirt and then the T-shirt for me so I can replace the bandages. The hospital-grade antiseptic and antibiotic ointment the doctor had given us has impressively closed up and healed most of his scaring. The worst wound is the one I'm most careful while treating, the long one that runs down the side of his ribcage and wraps around his back.

I didn't have anybody to replace my own bandages, but that was fine. It left more antiseptic for him, anyways.

As I seal the gauze, I notice that the hand-shaped bruise around his throat, the one Jay'd given to him, had been layered over with fresh ones. Max pulls the sweatshirt back down and I think the black around his neck will never leave.

 _I don't want to do this anymore_ , I think as I move back off the mattress, really seeing the product of my choices in front of me. For the first time, I want to give up.

I shut the bedroom door after myself, joining Hester again in the living room. He's sprawled across a beaten blue futon with a bong lit in his left hand already and I seat myself across from him.

"I thought you hated the Demirs." The man says right before inhaling, and it's more of a statement than a question. 

I don't even want to begin talking about it, so I simply shrug, flicking out my blade and busying my hands whittling. But Hester, rather uncharacteristically, doesn't let up. "Weren't you were sure he killed your Dad over that Brusey company? You even practically starved for a while instead of taking up the job he offered you. Didn't Frank offer you that job out of guilt anyways?"

"I said I _thought_ ," I say simply, picking shit off my clothing that wasn't there. "Frank Demir was a piece of shit, but so was my dad. He had it coming really, in the end, whatever he did. And I really fucking hated his kid at first. I couldn't even look at him."

_I wanted to hurt him badly. And I almost did._

"But thing I realized was that the kid wasn't like his dad at all. Our fathers were similar, and I thought I was drawn towards him at first because he reminded me of Jasper. But I realized I liked him because he reminded me of me."

Hester blinks, then forks his fingers through his hair. He looks uncomfortable, "You've changed Hank," he comments offhandedly, and I know he doesn't get it.

I shrug and Hester bends down under the coffee table to offer me a double corona cigar and I shake my hand to reject it.

"You used to smoke everything, B!" He exclaims, scandalized, his animation back. I shrug. He lights it for himself, still complaining, and I'm wondering where the fuck his bong went. 

The man exhales a thick plume of smoke before tilting his head to one side to examine me. He almost looks fully coherent when he says,"You guys came a far fucking way. I've never heard of anyone do what you two have."

"Oh really? I'm surprised fucking around with gangs isn't a more common bucket list theme."

"Exactly.” he agrees, ignoring my sarcasm. The cigarette in his mouth falls immobile. He's perfectly lucid for a moment, and I see an admiration in his eyes, the same admiration I saw in Manny's, that made me feel simultaneously uncomfortable and daringly hopeful. "That's because nobody's ever made it this far."

"We haven't accomplished anything yet," I reply, digressing. I don't like the warm pride I feel when I see him smile and cock an eyebrow.

"The docks are only ten minutes away from here. We'll go to Cuba first, then once you're in Belize, you're home free, my man."

I don't respond to that, and he doesn't expect one. We lay like that, Hester flaming his entire stash and flooding the room in a bitter, second-hand haze. It's disgustingly therapeutic, because I'm not the one blazing it this time. It's past midnight when Hester falls comatose and I leave him.

Before I head for bed, I go to his kitchen and fill myself up a bowl with ice cubes and water, soaking my hands and letting them go numb. We're running low on painkillers, but I can’t tell Hester or Max that. I rummage through Hester's cabinets for some Advil, but am disappointed to find none. He has enough drugs, I think humorlessly.

When I get to the bedroom, I'm not surprised to find I'm full of nervous energy, unable sleep. _When could I ever,_ I think, but I'm not irritated this time. I decide to lay there on the beaten mattress and just bask in the moonlight, listening to the sound of the waves outside.

 _We were a single day away from becoming virtually untraceable._ I think at that moment, that my mistake ten years ago seems finally redeemable, with this reincarnated ten-year-old beside me.

Max has his back to me and I notice he jerks periodically. When I run my hand over his back, to still him, he stiffens immediately in response. 

"Kid--" I say, surprised. He's too warm. His breath hitches when I pull him closer by his shoulders.

"I'm not crying.” he insists, pulling back, turning to face me. In the dark, in the pale white sheets, his eyes seem to fucking glow. When I reach to run a hand through his hair, he doesn't resist, and I realize the hair around his temples are wet, so I knew he was lying.

If I had naively thought he'd recovered from what happened in that sawmill, I was wrong.

I'd grown to know what his sobs sound like--muffled against an arm or a pillow or swallowed back down. When they're suppressed again and again until his throat hurts or his voice breaks. I know what his sobs sound like, or at least I think I do.

_The only thing I could do was be there for him,_ I realize, _for however long he needed,_ and that was fine by me. He needed me, I suppose. 

And I realize the reverse is true, because when he calms himself down enough to relax against me, I realize somewhere in that process I'd relaxed enough to finally fall asleep too. 

_And if we had to drive again in Belize, to alleviate him yet again, that was fine too._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're at the last arc


	8. imma delete this chap in two months lol

hi my gorgeous friends. I'm sorry for being such a bitch about posting and replying to all your wonderful messages. The last chapter has literally been fully written and just sitting in my docs since last November. All I need to do is proofread it and grammar check it, and I'm pretty sure yall don't care but imma lay it on you guys anyway, so I'm studying pre-med in college rn and this semester is C R I T I C A L for me, so I'm just trying to stay afloat. I know some of you dm-ed me about this, but until summer, when I'm free and can post the update, let's have a convo in the comments section!! Some of you send me the nicest and dopest ish and I feel like yall should share it with each other. Tell me about you all. What do you like? What do you not like? What brought you here? What is it about you that made you read all the nasty shit in this story? What are your guys' assumptions about the ending? How would you like it to end? What do you think about Hank? In case it wasn't obvious, he was supposed to be a fucking David on steroids gone wrong. You're supposed to hate him, but do you? Etc etc. Your guys's time of mind means everything to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DONT WANT TO DELETE THIS BC COMMENTS 
> 
> edit: I'll probably make a separate chapter and just copy past these in <3


	9. I Don't See Jasper

Hester wakes us up at the crack of dawn and we pile into his truck yet again. I'll think about how I’ll miss the place, despite our short tenure, with its shallow water, candy sand, and cool breeze. I'll miss it all, but when I think of Belize, I remember there's something better ahead for me.

Max's hand tightens around mines.

"Do you have the paperwork?" Hester asks when the road begins to thin and the pier looms ahead. The windows are rolled down and I can smell the salt in the air. It’s so humid, there’s sweat rolling down my back already. I dig into my duffel and fan my face with the papers. "Done."

Hester slides his ID card into the scanner in front of the large steel gate, then slides in the guest cards I’d collected from the warehouse that day. I feel a sort of inconsolable sadness when the machine eats the two guest cards before snapping them in half so they couldn’t be reused. “Have a great ride.” the machine says robotically before the barricade lifts.

_Were they really worth it?_

We pass what seems to be miles and miles of multi-colored shipping crates stacked into atop each other. Hester blatantly ignores all the safety signs and rounds the corners sharply until rows of bobbing boats come into view. Driving the car between two large shipping crates so that we’re in its shade, Hester pops open his door and jogs towards the decks, leaving the car running. He returns soon, looking visibly annoyed, “We gotta wait till nine: Only then are the tugboats available for us to take.”

I lean against the interior. “Should we stay hidden?”

“It doesn’t matter at this point.” He says and I step outside gratefully. “There won't be any boats sailing in the area we're going. There might be one or two shipment types, but even those might be rare. We’re really in the home stretch now.”

I open the back door to let Max out, but I stop when I see his pained expression.

Hester looks concerned, "Are you okay, kid?"

"Are you sick?" I ask, kneeling over and he drives his palms into his eyes.

"I don't know." He says softly, and when I put a hand on his forehead, it's blazing hot.

I realize that yesterday, he'd probably been crying from pain and not trauma, and I feel absolutely nauseated for ignoring how hot he'd been.

I hand him the last two pills we had, but two's not enough, and I feel like a fucking idiot for taking the amount that I did yesterday. He dry swallows them.

“We have some time to rest here.” I say, sitting down beside him and he leans against me. When he runs a hand through his hair, his hair comes out in it. He looks at his open palm for a minute with this sort of morbid fascination, then dry laughs.

“Do you think my parents would even recognize me?”

I don’t know what he wants to hear. “We’ve gotten darker, I suppose.” I lean over the front seat and pop open the sun visor for him. "See?” I say, but he’s looking at anything but our tans. The way he looks at himself makes me think he really hasn't looked in a mirror in a long time.

"I lost weight." He says flatly, and I know that's not all he wants to say. It's really all so bizarre because I've been around him long enough to understand he wasn't afraid of offending himself-- he was afraid of offending _me_ , as if complaining meant he wasn’t grateful for everything that happened. He traces the largest scar, the one that spans his left temple before disappearing into his hair. The one that’s open and reopened and layered over so many times it’s become discolored.

I think I used to feel severe hurt whenever I’d notice a new bruise on him, or when I’d watch his facial scars distort his face every time he talked, as if it was all irreversible. But, looking at him now, it's clear to me that he’ll heal and that he’ll evantually recover. Max's face is soft and sharp in ways I know will make someone very happy one day.

“We should head over now,” says Hester, popping his head in, “It’s hot as fuck outside, so brace yourself.”

"Come on, kid,” I say, forcing false optimism, “Look at the bright side. You’re gonna meet so many new people, people who’ll be very happy to meet you. You can meet my grandparents too.”

"Everything hurts," he moans softly, tracing the discolored patch, "And I look disgusting."

"I think you look beautiful," I say. My voice is gentle enough to make his ears turn pink. "Come on, kiddo. Cuba awaits us."

The cries of seagulls echo above us. The sun is severe, with heat waves reflecting off the boardwalk and visibly warping the air. It seems to shimmer in the humidity. It didn’t help that each boat was spotless and painted a brilliant white, blinding anyone who tried to look at it. It’s enough to make you see dancing blue dots when you look away.

We pass row after row of boats congregated by model; yacht, missile, steam. Finally, Hester leads us off the deck and down a boardwalk lined with a row of modest tugboats, bobbing together in a fleet. They’re each pretty strong looking, each nearly the size of a small house. The deck is single level, with a single, elevated deckhouse in the middle, splitting the deck in half. The stairs on either side of the deckhouse connects the two sides. There’s custom military-grade armor lining their walls.

Hester stops at the last one of the row. “Here’s your prize getaway, compadre.”

The boat, despite its size, bobs lightly against the ocean waves as we board. The planks, having been left to bake in the sun for God knows how long, is both soft and crisp, and small white sails billow like flags from the mast. I assume they’re there more for decoration than for any real purpose. The boat was motorized after all. We follow Hester as he climbs up the stairs and unlocks the door to the deckhouse. It could pass for a small cabin had it not been so humid and salt encrusted. The whole room is fully wooded with rows of drawers built into the walls, all save for the glass windshield situated upfront by the steering, which was made up of a long panel of the only windows in the room. Hester cracks open one of them, letting in a weak and merciful breeze. “I don’t like getting shit in my eyes while I drive, so I apologize for only keeping one open.” He yanks the pull cord for a plastic fan before inserting the key in the ignition and roaring the boat to life. Hester presses the accelerate and the boat lurches forward, rocking Max and I back.

The wind rushing in through the single window and the cracks in the windshield feels surreal against my sweat-drenched skin. The ocean looks immensely powerful from up here, behind the glass, as if it could swallow us all up in an instant. I’m fixated on how the water splits at the bow. It seems to drink up the ocean at its sharp tip, just like the old harbor boats I used to ride as a kid with my father. Mega was a sort of king pin before he fell into mediocrity and eventually into failure. He had a shit ton of resources before after all.

It’s one of those clear days where the sun fills up the whole sky and you can see up for miles. The neon blue of the ocean reflects the sky and the sun is directly above us. I can see fish jumping out of the water in front of us, and I turn to see if Max is seeing it too, but he’s fixated out the side window, unsmiling. I'm about to ask him if he needs seasick medicine when he asks, "Hester? Didn't you say this area wasn't supposed to have any boats except shipment ones?"

Hester briefly looks over, "Yeah, kiddo. We're off duty Sunday mornings. Nobody's on this side of the waters today, which makes my job a lot easier."

"But there's a boat over there." He insists, squinting and I follow his gaze and spot a bright blue speedboat in the distance.

My heart drops, "It's coming right at us. Do you think it's a patrol boat? Do you have your license?"

Hester's eyes narrows to slits. I grab the wheel as Hester suddenly let's go and leaps over to that side of the glass. He squints his eyes against the sun, "We don't have patrol boats," he says and my stomach drops, "That's a private boat."

I could see it clearer now, a large, motor yacht, closing the space between us quickly.

"Oh my fucking God," I say, and Charles's name gets stuck in my throat before I can vocalize it. Hester doesn't need my verbal conclusion though-- he's already leaped behind the wheel and has slammed the gas pedal hard enough to throw shit off the shelves.

I had always considered myself a clear-headed person, someone who never cracked under pressure, but I'm suddenly paralyzed with panic as Hester steers the boat with one hand and quickly tries to dial up someone with the other. I'm hyperventilating, my hands numb and sweaty. _Oh fuck, Oh shit._ My eyes dart rapidly across the deckhouse, which had quickly turned from my haven to a prison that trapped me, searching for an escape, maybe a weapon, when my eyes fall on Max. I grab his arm and yell to Hester, "I'll take him to the bilge!"

"Do you want to _die_?" Hester yells disgustedly, phone pressed up against his ear by his shoulder. He's about to yell something when the cabin explodes.

I feel the shards of glass before I hear the shatter. My years of bomb-protection drills has me instantly on the ground and I've shoved Hester down with me. We collapse under the steering wheel as bullets tear through the wooden door, gouging the wall, and sending splinters flying. I've barely able to open my eyes before the second round comes, a spray of bullets tearing through the side windows this time, the fire guided by infrared dots. It strikes a side wall and shatters a sink mirror.

There's a solid pause before I hear the bullets start up again. They've moved from the deck-floor to the side of the boat now. I can hear them opening up with sharp, precise three-round bursts, jerking the boat with its violent pattering. They're trying to break the armor. They’re trying to sink the boat.

Hester's reaction is subconscious, automatic. He leaps from his knees over to a drawer, producing a small round object. He holds it to his chest tightly, and I realize only after he's pulled the pin out and has thrown it, that it’s a delayed hand grenade.

With a murderous boom, I hear the sound of breaking and crunching glass. A gust of air from the detonation hits our boat, throwing me back off my knees. A delayed second later, metal shards from their yacht impale themselves against our boat wall. There's faint screaming, and it sounds like a buzz in my blotched ears. Splinters drive into my palms as I hold the floor to keep myself still. I'm not sure if it's the force of the explosion that's rocking the water and making me shake, or if it's just me.

Hester's far more clear-headed. In any other situation, I would've been madly embarrassed, but I can barely breathe now, and the man grabs himself a rifle from the same drawer and loads it messily, pressing himself against the wall to peer out the window. "We have to ditch the fucking boat." He says bitingly a minute later, "I've got a dinghy in the back we can use to escape. I've called for backup, but God knows when they'll arrive." He hands me his gun, "Hold them back until I scream, and then you hightail it. Keep Max with you. This is the best place to be when they start shooting again."

I can barely nod before he's gone, sprinting for the back, and I hear a few gunshots go off instantly. I push Max in the space under the steering wheel before I grab the gun. I've barely finished loading it before I feel movement from the front of the boat. When I peer out the window, my heart jumps to my throat when I see Montivellos pooling out of their destroyed and mangled cabin, with the lesser-hurt trying to jump the space to our boat. Their ship is quickly sinking.

I shake with adrenaline now, not fear. With the deckhouse’s elevated style, I'm able to shoot, sniper style, as they jumped. I used to have the best aim in the cabinet, and I suppose Charles’s investment in me comes in handy now--I miss only when my trembling displaces my arm. The shots are rapid and mechanical, and they deafen me. The dying colleagues are barely a deterrent for the men jumping the space between the boats-- they simply dash faster foreward to avoid getting hit. Their gun assault starts up again, and they're pummeling the deck floor once again. I can't even shoot them back now: I'm ducked below the steering wheel. The shooters know where I've been firing from now, and I know the deck walls, despite that grade-A lining, cannot hold for long with this kind of continued assault.

When their shooting pauses and I hear the boat shake again from the front, I align myself with the window to shoot the intruders again. But when I peer out, I realize with a roll of nausea that there are still men piling out of the cabin, and there's too many to count now. I'm almost out of bullets so I dash to the drawer immediately to grab some, but I don't find casings. I find one lone grenade instead.

I'm frozen with indecision, until a sudden spray of bullets lurches the boat violently forward, throwing me back off my feet and forcing me out of it. I don't hesitate again. I grip the grenade so that the striker level is pushed up against my abdomen. Adrenaline fills my blood and the stimulant replaces my fear. I pull the pin and hurl it at the boat. The moment of impact is the moment it detonates, and it doesn't throw me off my feet this time.

I watch as the back of the ship explodes with a force enough to nearly capsize it instantly. A couple men up front, whether out of panic or sheer anger, jump on our deck, and one of them's got a fucking _rocket launcher_. In a moment of absolute horror, I jump down from the deck and barrel my way towards them, faster than they could ever move. Grabbing my revolver from the small of my back, I cock and shoot twice, once at the man's chest and once at the hand that held the weapon. He screams and I shove him back off the boat, and in the second that I do, two more men have jumped on me.

 _These were the young, inexperienced men that I’d mentored,_ I realize, _the newbies that idolized me_ , and it's an afterthought after I've snapped their necks.

I charge towards the next man, using nothing but brute strength and speed to shove him back. I throw up the larger man's forearms, incapacitating him for a split second, and it's in that split second that I’m able to drive my elbow down, catching his chest and rolling him to the floor. I shoot him point blank, then turn to bury a bullet in each of the two men climbing in next, right in the forehead.

The boats are beginning to drift apart. Whatever automation they’d used to connect us had either unhinged or gotten loose, and the connected tips of our boats begin to curve from the erratic waves. It’s a near miracle I’m level-headed enough to hear Hester’s yell for us, over the sound of gunshots pattering the deckhouse and men still trying to complete passage, and I'm about to hightail it when the next man, an absolute mammoth, comes rocketing off the edge right at me. He's got a blade and I catch the man's wrist as it comes down, twisting it and maneuvering it out of his hands. The monstrous man simply drops it and grabs my wrist instead with his left arm, holding my gun hand against my chest. Instead of shooting me with his gun like I'd expected, he drives a knee into my groin, resonating waves of dull nauseating pain deep in my abdomen.

Somewhere in my pain, I register then that Charles wanted me alive, and that they'd probably been ordered explicitly not to kill me.

When he releases one hand to grab my neck, I roll his hand under his wrist and then drive his arm behind his back, twisting hard, before suddenly letting go to box his ears to break his eardrums. I shoot him with his gun, and he lays on the ground twitching, mouth agape.

The moment I catch my breath, I scream hoarsely, "I'm coming!"

I dash up the stairs and grab Max, who visibly shudders the moment he sees me. I wondered if he thought I was dead. Instead of using the side railings, which put me in open line of the shooters once again, I hastily decide to just leap out the back window and use the railing to break my fall. I expected the fall and anticipated it, in the moments before landing, and I let my body relax. I swing harshly, grabbing the railing, and land flat on my feet. If I’d broken something, I was too high off the adrenaline to feel it. I sprint down the back deck and I peer over the edge to see a motorboat rocking against the waves. Hester loosens the rope the held the boats together the moment he sees me, but doesn't let go completely, and I can tell it's straining him.

"We're good!" I yell. I grab the rope ladder to my side and unfold and drop it when I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked and when I turn around, my hands tight around my chest, stumbling to grab my gun, I hear it go off.

When I move my hands away slowly, there's blood on it already, and when the pain does catch up, it catches up all at once. I crumble. A fresh deep burn sears across my abdomen, liquidating my thoughts instantly, and I can't see, think, or breathe. I fall back against the boat barrier. My ears buzz erratically. In the thick soup of my brain, I register dimly that the buzzing in my ears was the sound of Max crying.

He's hysterical, stumbling back, away from an advancing Todd. He shoves a boat chair in his direction and Todd catches it effortlessly, tossing it aside before closing the distance between them and grabbing Max by the throat.

The one thing about Todd is that he's always been brawn over brain-- he's too fixated on the glory that is in his hands than noticing that his shot had not killed but grazed me, exactly where I'd been grazed at that gas-station hold up years ago and I think that it’s all fate. The man doesn't notice me inching out and training my gun on him and it's only when I've cocked and fired two fatal 7.62 mm rounds into his chest does he recognize.

He drops to the floor as I haul myself up, shakily pushing myself up the wall and smearing blood over the white plastic surface. I think disjointedly that the reason I was able to still function, the reason I found the pain comparably tolerable to last time, might’ve been because of the excessive painkillers still in my blood. Max reaches for me desperately, like a baby, but as soon I pick him up, I see a horde of people jumping the bilge, all at once. They fixed whatever had gotten loose and now there's a clear path to the deckhouse, and as a result, to our side of the boat.

"Hank!" Hester screams and I realize that the gap between the dinghy and our boat is increasing rapidly.

In a split second, I make my decision. It's really all so clear. I howl, _"Catch him, catch him, catch him!"_ right before I toss the flailing kid over the edge, like he's fucking luggage.

Hester catches him easily. And then a hail of bullets cuts him down.

"No!" I scream, just before I'm directly impaled, right through my torso, and I scream again. White, hot pain sears through me and I'm blinded for a moment. I twitch against the thin long blade in shock, and I can't breathe and I only dimly recognize the hilt buried below my chest: it's Stefan's katana.

"There you are, you son of a fucking bitch--"

When Stefan comes after me again, I remember the gun grasped tightly between my hands from Todd and I raise my hands to shoot his face point-blank. I dissociate when I see his face mutilate. I think I'm delirious now.

I inch the blade back out slowly, teeth clenched, not even able to scream or cry in pain at this point. The pain seethes through me in grainy waves and my vision is growing foggy. The cabinet’s all here, I think distantly, as I process more and more blurry figures climbing and jumping the bilge. Charles sent his disposable men to beat us down before sending his best to finish the job. There's a fear growing in me: I don't see myself getting out of this.

I quickly look over the edge of the boat, ready to leap, but I stop when I see that the dinghy has moved dangerously far. Hester’s face is twisted in pain, straining to close the distance, and it’s all so useless at this point. "Grab my hand!" Max screams extending a palm. He's covered in blood and it's not his. It's all so nonsensical because there's no fucking way I'll get down in time and I'll drag him down into the water, too.

I throw him the duffel bag instead. He screams as the gap between us grows too large for any kind of passage.

I spin around when I hear the thundering footsteps approaching behind me and I empty the last two bullets into the figure closest to me-- Foster. I drive the bloody katana through him before shoving the man aside. Bullets from the deckhouse rain over me, aiming for the little boat, but its too far away by now and I can hear the sharp patter as they hit nothing but water.

Jay aims the barrel of his automatic shotgun at me, and I'm all out of options at this point, so I barrel straight at him, grabbing his neck. Right as I do, his gun goes off and two bullets embed themselves in my torso. I can't even scream this time.

Jay pops my jaw from under my chin, and I bite down on my tongue hard enough to feel my own blood spray. He grabs me by my shoulders, pins me back against him, and forces my chin up, baring my throat. My muscles spasm erratically-- I have no control over my body anymore-- and so he locks my head in the joint of his elbow to hold me still, and then slits my throat with the incised hunting knife that’d started it all.

I think it's poetic justice that it's the same blade I decapitated Frank Demir with.

"NO!" I hear someone scream, and I realize it's… _Charles_. "THERE'S A TRACKER ON HIM!" and I'm not even sure how he's found out, or where he's been all this time, but it's too late.

Jay lets go of me, instantly, like he's been electrocuted, and I choke, hands cupping in front of me as I feel the blood spray.

"No, no, no--" someone is saying and all sound begins to blur together as my senses dim. My pain begins to dim too. Jay probably had the intention of making this hurt, but I felt nothing at all.

I choke on my own blood, coughing violently, and I can feel the frantic eyes on me and hear the desperate swears and screams in the pulp of what was left of my brain.

But it dawns on me then. _The kid’s free_. He's fucking free, and I can never hurt him again. No one will ever hurt him again.

The only thing I was disappointed in was that Max had to see a throat get slit one more time.

The kid's resourceful. He'll definitely survive, safe and untraceable, with my family and Hester's crew sailing to meet him right now. Let the Demir heir age. He'll be back. That kid'll conquer the world.

I'm smiling and they can't take that away from me.

I'm barely conscious when rough hands grab me and throw me overboard. It’s all in slow motion; I feel like I’ve hit the water hours later.

I don't see the sea as much as I feel it. Blood spreads over its surface profusely. The world, my senses, it's all one red pulsing wound-- the water around me quickly looks like a gorey sunset. I dimly hear a motor roar to life as the beaten boat is started up. They're trying to escape.

But the bureau is fast. The last time we baited a body with this kind of tracker they were there in minutes. The gang'll never make it out on time.

It's sloppy for them to not have backup waiting or for them to pursue us with a more fool-proof plan. We’ve never made sloppy mistakes like this in our entire tenure. But then again it's always been me who's planned it out for them, every last detail down to every last minute. No one was as neurotic and as dedicated as me, and maybe all this time when I praised the accomplishments of Charles, I should I've been crediting _me_.

I was Charles’s power.

When they drive off, the force of the motor blades drowns me and I don't resurface after that.

 _I took down the Montivellos_ , I think in a moment of sheer awe. I took down Boss Charles. My own father couldn't do that. And I think for a moment maybe I wasn't a failure at all.

I was so proud of how far we'd gotten. I was so proud, even if I wouldn't be able to go on with him.

I wonder one day, if that doctor, Manny, would ever come out with our story, years from now when we're both long gone. Max had the man’s card in the duffel after all. And the money to fund a future.

I wanted to see that kid grow and succeed, and I wanted that more than anything else in the entire world, but maybe the moment I tried to hurt him was the moment the universe decided that kind of happiness just wasn't meant for me. I prayed to God to take the evil out of his life, and maybe this was it.

That kid was the most wonderful thing to happen to me in my miserable life. There was a certain quality of life that felt like forever in the last two weeks than the last thirty years of my life. There was really no other way I'd want to end my life than beside that kid anyways.

I was so happy I was going to be with my wife and my son and with Larry again. And if the kid was happy too, that I was dying and gone, I wouldn't blame him.

As a sort of dying wish, I had always wanted to see a mirage of my kid one last time before I died, but I don't see Jasper. I see Max.

 

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew the moment Hank laid a hand on that kid, the moment he tried to hurt him, that in the ending, Hank could never end up with him.


End file.
